This project focusses on restoring decorative objects. It is about learning from the past, saving stories for the future and contributing to a sustainable world.

I am Inge. Next to my work at the University of Twente I am not only interested in history but I also really enjoy working with my hands. I love to restore old objects and I do this with my husband Albert. We hit the road together to search for old things and Albert is also very handy. We can spend hours crafting, cleaning, polishing, painting, sawing, timbering and researching. We only work on objects we love. This website shows our result.

I have been involved in research for quite some time:

Inge Broekman placed the for the arts known and important documents around the poet Constantijn Huygens – his autobiography, Rembrandt’s letters and the Oranjezaal documents – in the bigger picture of his statements about the arts. Huygens (1596-1687) was connaisseur and admirer of the art of painting, but also secretary of the stadholder Frederik Hendrik.

This dissertation is available via UvA-DARE: Constantijn Huygens, de kunst en het hof

This dissertation addresses the question of the meaning and function of sources as they are critically analyzed within the framework of all his statements about art. Research on Huygens and art has been conducted foremost from the art historical perspective, and a relatively selective number of sources have been used. The objective of this dissertation is to examine what the aforementioned important, known texts about art in Huygens’ oeuvre mean in the biographical context of his multifaceted life.

Central questions are: How can Huygens’ poems about art be characterized, and how did they function? Did Huygens have a personal art collection, and if so, what did it look like? What were Huygens’ responsibilities when it came to the artistic policy of stadholders Frederik Hendrik and Willem II? And finally, how should the passage on painting in Huygens’ biography of his youth be read?