A shipbuilder's portrait inspired by the Helios tetradrachm of Rhodos

[Pellinore]

The 'Needle of Goedkoop'. A sculpture of Daniël Goedkoop (1850-1929). This beautiful portrait I saw yesterday on the NDSM Island, Amsterdam-North. It's fastened on a particularly ugly monument, a 'monolith' made of rough concrete (but hey, it dates from 1944). The Needle was very recently moved: it has been slipshod, slantwise, lovelessly been thrown on a plot of stone and weeds not far from the ferry stop. The lantern that is at the top of the needle in this picture has vanished. In the meantime, they built an ultra modern Hilton hotel next to it. Maybe the Needle will find a better place sometime – before it's totally demolished and the beautiful sculpture defaced.

The portrait is one of the early works of Carel Kneulman (1915-2008), a beautiful three-quarter face that reminds me of the fine Rhodos portraits of the god Helios. It measures about 20 cm in diameter.

Goedkoop (the meaning of the name is 'Cheap') was an important shipbuilder, but also the great-grandfather of one of the best-known Dutch historians (by grace of the television), Hans Goedkoop – he held a perfect oration when the Needle was put on its present plot. Here is an illustrated article (sorry, all links in Dutch) about the fortunes and incidents of the sculpture.

-- Paul

[Figleaf]

NDSM and Goedkoop are separate enterprises. A good overview of the family and company history is here. The same site offers other historic material - but nothing on the monument.

I suppose the lamp would be to complete the image of a lighthouse.

Goedkoop dominated the harbour tugging business in IJmuiden. I remember the harbour tugs of Rederij Goedkoop as tiny, not appreciating how they deftly handled ships of a much larger size by pushing, pulling and going backwards or sideways. Living in IJmuiden, I was more taken in by the Wijsmuller ocean-going boats, Hector, Nestor, Stentor and the smaller Assistent, life-saving hero ships. Eventually, Goedkoop was taken over by Wijsmuller.

Peter

[eurocoin]

An interesting monument and portrait. It appears that it is located in its current position since January 2017. The original copper lamp of 1944 on top of the monument at some point went missing and was replaced in 2011. Based on the little information about the original lamp that is available, it is clear that the replacement was not a good match. Early 2017 the replacement lamp went missing too. A new, more identical, copy of the lamp should of course have been made a long time ago.

In the Dutch article of April 2017, there is written that: "The foundation that maintains the heritage of the wharf was waiting for a business to come forward that is willing to recreate the lamp". That clearly never happened. I wonder why the foundation was looking for a replacement while the same article mentions that the City of Amsterdam, which ordered the monument to be moved, is owner of it. Why do théy not maintain and repair it?

The area around it should also be changed, preferrably recreated with a metal surrounding barrier and plants, like it looked in 1944. With monuments, it is of importance that the surrounding area too is being kept as identical as possible. They know that very well in Amsterdam, but apparenty some monuments are more important than others. In this case, even some simple grass and a cleaning of the area would already be a great improvement.

Remarkable that the historian Hans Goedkoop, who is indeed reasonably influential, doesn't appear to have done anything in the last 6 years to stop the decay of the monument for his great-grandfather.

[Pellinore]

Thanks Eurocoin, for your information. It's a pity that all those new young NDSM people are still not much interested in the monuments of their past.
— Paul