Nigtevecht / Nichtevecht / Niftarlake / Niftarvechta / Nigftarvechta / Nigtevecht en Hinderdam

Ortt van Schonauwen (1858) writes about a font from Nichtevecht [aka Nigtevecht] sold in 1857; it is a hexagonal basin of Bentheim stone, decorated with faces and vine leaves, which the then owner had painted in whitewash and installed as a planter in his garden. Ortt van Schonauwen (ibid.) further reports the well-preserved pedestal base of this font, also of Bentheim stone in its original location [NB: OvS (ibid.) describes the material as "Bentheimer steen", not "zansteen"; it is known that many churches in this area of the Netherlands were built using different stone from the quarries at Bentheim, not just sandstone]. The annual report of the Commissie der Koninklijke Akademe van Wetensckappen for 1866 (p. lxiii) informs that the font was owned by one J. Koening, ship captain from Rotterdam, and that the owner ceded (?) it to the government; the object was temporarily stored at the Museum van Oudheden in Leiden. The report describes the font at the time as being made of two unmatched parts: a 14th-century basin and a 17th-century pedestal base; the basin sides are decorated with a pair of arches that have a floral ornament and a human mask alternaiting in the spandrels; inside the basin is a large round opening [1 Ned palm, i.e., 9.6 cm] which communicates with the base; the base itself is described as being a truncated pyramid with a pair of intertwined dolphins (?) on each side, their protruding heads at the corners; it also gives its one-time location in the garden of the tavern in [near?] Nigtevecht. The Kerk Nigtevecht site [www.kerknigtevecht.nl] [accessed 22 January 2016] notes and illustrates the current ashtray-like metal font mounted on the side of the pulpit, as it is common practice in churches of the Nederlands Hervormde Kerk; this same source reports that a Gothic baptismal font stood for centuries in the church but was later preserved in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. [NB: there appears to have been an effort by the churchwardens at Nigtevecht to reclaim their font from the Rijksmuseum, but the basin of the old font was instead sent on loan to the church at Soest; the later base was not part of the loan, for the old basin now rests on a plain hexagonal pedestal base and a lower base of the same shape with a single moulding atop -- we have no information on the 17th-century (?) base, its provenance or its present whereabouts]. [cf. Index entry for Soest, Utrecht]. The catalogue entry in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/zoeken/objecten?q=doopvont&p=4&ps=12&ii=1#/BK-NM-1604,37] [accessed 23 January 2016] gives the date as 1400-1500: "Een doopvont met voetstuk van hardsteen. Zeshoekig met dubbele Gotische nissen in het midden waarvan één, masker of een bladornament. Gevonden in 1866 bij het slopen van een buitenplaats te Nichtevecht." A 1929 photograph of a group of ancient fonts inside the Rijksmuseum [www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/zoeken?q=doopvont&p=8&ps=12&ii=4] [accessed 23 January 2016] shows this font yet on another pedestal base.