Art Deco Ceramic Table Lamp by PZH Gouda, 1928, with New Dupion Silk Shade

An Art Deco Dutch ceramic table lamp made from a 1928 PZH Gouda Yozea vase, featuring Japonisme floral decoration in cobalt and teal, paired with a new Dupion silk lampshade in a peacock blue green. Professionally rewired with a new socket and fabric-wrapped cord; supplied with a US plug or adapted for international use. Height includes lampshade. This one-of-a-kind table lamp began life as a vase hand-painted in 1928 at Plateelbakkerij Zuid-Holland (PZH) in Gouda, in a pattern the factory named Yozea. It comes from PZH's best years: the bold, colorful Art Deco pieces of the 1920s and early 1930s are the ones collectors seek out most. Deep cobalt at the base gives way to a lighter, softer blue through the body of the vase. Over this, fan-shaped blossoms are painted in several shades of teal, threaded through with dark branching stems drawn with the loose, sure hand of Japanese ink painting. That Japanese note is no accident. For more than two hundred years, while Japan kept its doors closed to the West, the Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to trade there, from a tiny island trading post in Nagasaki harbor. When Japanese prints, lacquer and porcelain reached Europe in quantity in the late 19th century, they became a lasting source of ideas for Dutch designers. Yozea shows that influence in a Deco key: a Japanese subject, simplified and set down in flat, graphic color. The new dupion silk shade takes the teal of the blossoms a shade deeper, into peacock blue-green, so that base and shade read as a single piece. Lit, the silk shows its natural slub and shifting sheen. The base carries the original PZH factory mark, the painted pattern name Yozea and the date symbol for 1928. The vase is in excellent condition, the painting crisp and the colors rich, and it was converted without being altered in any way.