Baller A worker in a pottery who rolls chunks of clay into balls ready for the potter to use on the wheel.
Batavia Capital of the Dutch East Indies on the island of Java. The city is now known as Jakarta, the capital of modern-day Indonesia.
Bontekoe Journaal A diary account of the voyage of the Nieuw Hoorn, an armed merchant ship, authored by the ship’s captain, Willem Bontekoe. After setting off for Batavia in 1618, the Nieuw Hoorn was shipwrecked near Sumatra and the surviving crew endured a perilous journey in lifeboats to Batavia.
Hindeloopen A town in North Holland known for its colorful decorated furniture. Hindeloopen pieces often have floral motifs similar to what you might expect to see on an old-fashioned gypsy caravan in the UK.
VOC The Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) was founded in 1603 to explore new territories in the Orient and establish trading routes for valuable commodities such as spices. The VOC was a company with shareholders and directors but also represented the Dutch government in negotiations and offered armed resistance to foreign powers.
Gracht A gracht is a narrow canal found in many old Dutch cities and will be familiar to those who have visited or seen pictures of Amsterdam. Used as alternatives to streets, grachts (grachten) were vital arteries for transporting produce and people in the past. Many warehouses and grand buildings in Dutch cities had doors leading directly onto them.
Weighing-house The weighing-house was an important public building in pre-modern Holland and Germany. Situated on or close to the market square, the weighing-house was where city officials would weigh produce sold at market on giant scales to establish how much tax was to be paid on it.