A specialist museum in Doesburg, a city in the eastern Netherlands, has had its entire collection of silverware stolen. Its staff have described the stolen objects as vital pieces of cultural history.
On Wednesday morning at 4.30am local time, two men forced their way into the Doesburg Silver Museum, which is housed in the 13th-century Martini church. The thieves, caught on security camera footage that is now being examined by police, crowbarred open a door and shattered display cabinets. They then stole more than 300 pieces of silverware, worth tens of thousands of euros, according to museum staff. Among them was a precious collection of mustard pots amassed by the museum’s founder Martin de Kleijn.
“The silver price is high... but for us it is of course far more than the silver price,” Ernst Boesveld—the chairman of the museum, which opened in 2021—told The Art Newspaper. “It is about the stories behind every mustard pot, it is history and it is cultural heritage. We are enormously disappointed and angry.”
According to Sietske Annevelink-Schurer, who sits on the museum’s board, the collection contains items from 1700 to 1920, once used by some of the wealthiest people in the world. “They were used by the elite, on their beautifully-laid tables,” she said. “The inside of the silver mustard pots had an inlay of glass or ceramics, because mustard corrodes silver and silver cannot withstand it.”
One unique object was a mustard pot and spoon by silversmith Marcel Blok, emblazoned with the arms of the city of Doesburg. “Doesburg is of course the quintessential mustard town,” said Boesveld. “We have a mustard museum where a very specific type is still made. And as a church community, there is a connection with the mustard seed because you see it in the Biblical stories. ”In the Early Modern period, when foreign spices were expensive and exotic, mustard was a prestigious condiment.
As prices for precious metals surge, the Netherlands has seen a flurry of targeted heists. A motorway statue known as De Tong (“the tongue”) has been repeatedly stripped by copper thieves, while more than €4m worth of golden treasures associated with the ancient Dacians, who lived in Iron Age Europe, were stolen from the Drents Museum in Assen last January.
Boesveld hopes the Doesburg perpetrators won't melt down the silver, because its monetary value is far greater when it is intact.