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| Figure 16 Tile, Holland, ca. 1650–1690. Delftware. 4.92" x 4.92" x .39". A mer-man with a forbidding face holds a cross (crucifix?) on a hooked sea; on the horizon are two yachts. The seventeenth-century Dutch, having thrown off Catholic idolatry, produced very few religiously oriented tiles. It is tempting, therefore, to see this grim merman as the personification of Catholic oppression. The clay is yellow, with beveled edges; two pinholes are set .59" in from the oxhead corners. There is some sub-surface crazing of the glaze. |