KLM WORLD BUSINESS CLASS TRAVELERS RECEIVE 81st DELFTWARE MINIATURE

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines enters its 81st year of operations on October 7, the day the airline was incorporated in 1919. The company follows its tradition again this year by presenting the 81st addition to the KLM collection of miniature Dutch houses as a gift to KLM World Business Class passengers.

Almost all the miniatures, manufactured in blue Delftware, are replicas of real, still existing, houses in the Netherlands. The 81st in the series is no exception, with the choice falling on a historic building located on the “Grote Markt” square in the northern city of Groningen. Known as Het Goudkantoor, the building, constructed in 1635 in Dutch Renaissance style, originally housed the tax authorities’ hall-marking office for gold and silverware, a function which it retained for many years, and which gave it its name, “The Gold Office.” Nowadays Het Goudkantoor houses a cafe-restaurant bearing the same name.

High on the building’s frontage, a Biblical quote in Latin reminds us of its original relationship to tax-collecting, “Date Caesari quae Caesaris” i.e. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s...”

On Friday, October 6, Claudia Hölzel, KLM’s Vice President Catering Inflight Services, will present the very first example of the 81st miniature to the Burgomaster of Groningen, Jacques Wallage. Representatives of Bols International, which supplies the Dutch gin in the miniatures, and the Hooghoudt distillery, current owner of “Het Goudkantoor,” will attend the presentation.

KLM started offering the miniature Delftware houses to its intercontinental business class passengers in the fifties. In 1994, the year when KLM passed its 75th anniversary, the number of miniatures in the KLM collection was synchronized with the company’s age. Since then, a new model has been added to the series each year.