Jan Van Ham, Sunlit Street, Pastel Oriental Scene

Jan van Ham (Dutch 1892 - 1989) A Sunlit Street, Possibly Morocco,Pastel Signed and Dated '26 67 x 45 cm. (without frame)

Johannes Cornelis van Ham (Gouda 1892 - 1989 Utrecht) was first a potter and later a painter. Jan was a gifted child when it comes to drawing and in 1904 at the age of 12 he was hired as an apprentice pottery painter at the NV Plateelbakkerij Zuid-Holland in Gouda where he could follow an internal training and he learned how to mix paint and glaze with the Rhodian technique. creating a matt glazed design. Jan was a self-taught Dutch potter, naturalistic/realistic painter and draftsman and member of artists' association Vank.
After his military service, he is a freelancer at various companies such as the Kunstaardewerkfabriek St. Lukas in Maarssen (1912/20), Zenith (1917/18) and the studio of Chris Lanooy in Gouda (1910/12). He then designs dinnerware that is made by Petrus Regout in Maastricht. During that time he also travels to Spain and Morocco to paint.
In 1920 he was one of the co-founders of "The Four Mushrooms" which he continued alone from 1923. During that time, he also increasingly emerged as a designer. In 1928 he designed, among other things, an Olympiad Cup for Zenith on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928.
After the Second World War, he designed a series of contemporary vases and bowls for Zenith and founded the ceramic studio 't Bolwerk in Utrecht, where he continued to work until potter Gert de Rijk took over the studio in 1965. He often worked in round shapes and pastel shades and a number of his works can now be found in the Centraal Museum. Shortly after the war he spent a lot of time on the Wadden Islands. The museum there has five of his works in its collection. In the 1960s he also visited Yugoslavia a lot.
He had his first exhibition as a painter in the Nobelstraat. He moved to the so-called artists' street, the Gasthuisstraat, a side street of the Biltstraat and after his retirement he devoted himself entirely to painting.