Furniture from the Rijks Museum

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Jenny and I are just back from a trip to Amsterdam - we had a great time.

I saw so much impressive furniture in the well-known Rijks Museum that I created a separate web page - If you like looking at awesomely fancy furniture that is centuries old, see www.plesums.com/travel/amsterdam/furniture Another woodworking friend saw the link on Facebook, which led to a discussion of what percent of the old furniture had the awesome inlays and marquetry. We never see "good" furniture in a museum that isn't over the top, so was that top a fraction of a percent of the total, with a lot of middle ground furniture that didn't make a museum, or was the middle quality furniture just a small part - leaving only pre-Ikea junk and this fancy museum quality?

If you want to see the entire travelogue, go to www.plesums.com/travel/amsterdam. It also includes a tour of a windmill driven sawmill.
 
Thanks for sharing those great pictures and journey. The furniture fascinates me. Wonder how long it takes to make one of those pieces.
The workmanship is tremendous. Yet they are all hand crafted. Suppose they made mininum wage?
Great pictures. Thanks
David
 
Really cool stuff.

So cool that you are able to do the things that you do. Also thank you so much for posting it.

I marvel at the workmanship, the creativity and the effort that goes into those works of art.

When I see stuff like that my head spins with all sorts of thoughts.

For me - I marvel at it - but I would not have it in my house. If I was rich and had a 20,000 square foot house, er, maybe.

Still, the attraction is in the making of it and skills involved.

Charlie, congrats on the visit, I do envy you for that visit. It must have been fantastic.
 
Thanks for posting pictures and details. Seems like a nice place to visit. How busy was it this time of the year? Is it considered a relatively slow time of the year for tourism?
 
We often travel to popular cities in the spring and fall when kids are in school.

Amsterdam wasn't bad in terms of congestion (but I didn't explore the red light district late at night). The line to the van Gogh museum was absurd, even with an advance ticket you had to spend about 20 minutes in line, and those without the advance ticket probably had to spend a couple hours. See the panoramic picture in the travelogue.

We could see the lines for the Ann Frank house/museum - extended around the block, but I didn't have the desire to visit even if there were no lines.

We travel a lot (we call it SKI trips -- Spend the Kid's Inheritance) over 100,000 airline miles per year. It is far less expensive than people think. Round trip to Hanoi was $985 each, and the hotel for 6 days was $205, including breakfast for both of us. $205 total, not per day. Boutique hotel with marble lobby and wood carvings everywhere.

Krakow Poland was another pleasant surprise - $1200 round Trip, and a great hotel in the ideal location for just over $100 per night.

I could go on and on. Many of our trips get a travelogue at www.plesums.com/travel - this trip was posted here because of a whole web page of furniture pictures. And I assume it wasn't a single artist, but a master and lots of apprentices.

Incidentally the benchmark for the windmill driven sawmill that we visited was a 2 man hand saw, the master on the top of the log/board being ripped, and the apprentice in the pit under the log (getting sawdust on his face). The performance standard was 1 meter (3 feet) per hour. The windmill could do 2 meters per hour, but with multiple blades that could saw 2 meters of an entire log per hour.
 
Definitely something to consider. My vacation account after retirement should cover that sort of vacation cost. I have looked at your travellog - quite impressive. You must build some decent frequent flyer miles.
 
.... You must build some decent frequent flyer miles.

To earn miles and status you must pay for your seat. We thrive on the status (free upgrades and access to special facilities, bonus award miles for each mile flown), so we pay for most of our flights. We joke that we can't use the frequent flyer miles ourselves. So to answer your curiosity, my wife and I together have over 1.6 million miles available. Members of our family are the primary users of those miles.
 
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