present in the boeken kamer and elsewhere in the house
In Pieter de Graeff’s probate inventory no bookcases are recorded under the boeken kamer’s section. This absence should come at no surprise since typically fixed furniture or items that were already bequeathed to heirs were not part of the appraised properties of the deceased. Besides from the obvious name given to this room in the inventory, the presence of books is testified to by a note written at the end of the boeken kamer's section (see image below): ‘op de voorsz[eijde] kamer en elders een quantityt boeken, waarvan andere specificatie staat gemaakt te werden’ (‘in this room and elsewhere, a number of books for which another catalogue is going to be made’)
Bookcases are further documented in the list of items bequeathed to Cornelis (Pieter and Jacoba’s eldest son). These items were coming from the boeken kamer, the comptoir and the camer solder. The fact that they are grouped together by type and not by room does not allow us to assign each item to a room with certainity. Undoubtedly, however, the ‘pine wood planks of the broken-up bookcases’ (‘de vure planken van de gebrokene boeke-kassen’) must relate to the bookcases in the boeken kamer. The same document also lists iron curtain rods, which I suggest were part of the bookcases to sustain the curtains. This reconstruction is substantiated by comparative evidence from seventeenth century dollhouses. In particular, I used the miniature bookcase in the small library of Petronella Oortman’s dollhouse as a model for the reconstruction hypothesis of the bookcase in Pieter’s boeken kamer. This dollhouse was created in Amsterdam between 1686 and 1710, and hence was contemporary to the Herengracht house. For a more detailed explanation of the sources, see Piccoli, Pieter de Graeff.
References and further reading:
C. Piccoli, Pieter de Graeff (1638-1707) and his treffelyke bibliotheek (Brill, 2025), chapter 6.
Written by Chiara Piccoli