The old factory, where pottery was made, closed its doors in 1984 due to overdue maintenance by the municipality. Since then, the building has stood empty and fell into disrepair. All this time, the factory was full of ovens, molds and hundreds of products. Last year, Leers came into contact with a wife of the ceramist who was the last to use the building. All the belongings in the building were still as they had been left behind and she feared that the industrial heritage would be lost.
Leers decided on that to bet to keep the factory. According to the former mayor, the building still has monumental value and should not be demolished. An investor has now been found, but the items from the past that are still there will have to be sorted out in the near future. On behalf of the new owner, Leers took care of clearing the buildings.
puzzle work
All the stones found have now been transferred to a shop in the center of Maastricht, where the work is being pieced together and restored by artist Chrit Rousseau. He said he was surprised when Leers showed him what he had found. “This is unmistakably Charles Eyck. I know him, and I have also experienced him in the past,” he says. In the mosaic you can see a sailing boat, the sun, the sea and a cactus. According to experts, the work clearly shows influences from the time that Eyck stayed in Curaçao in 1952.
Rousseau, together with Leers and Brandts, is now trying to get the last pieces together, and that is quite a job. “The large tiles, they are all already in place, but with the small pieces we are now putting color together, well and then just search. So it really is a puzzle,” he says.
Although the tableau is almost complete, there are still pieces missing. “We are still looking for Van Eyck’s signature. He always signed his works. Unfortunately, that is still in all those small pieces, exactly in the lower edge. And it has partly disappeared when it was chopped off in the factory. We hope that we can still find those pieces,” says Leers.
–
