The Hetjens-Museum is a museum in Düsseldorf dedicated to ceramics and its history. Founded in 1909, its collection preserves ceramic works that date back as far as 8000 years ago and come from all over the world.
The museum is named after the Düsseldorf collector Laurenz Heinrich Hetjens (1830-1906), whose estate has become the museum itself. Hetjens was an artisan upholsterer and saddle maker who had achieved moderate prosperity as the technical director of a glass factory in Aachen. In 1866 he married the widow Maria Catharina Regnier, 14 years older and very rich, and in the following years he devoted himself to art collecting and research. His main focus as a collector was Rhenish porcelain from the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods. Not only did he buy, but he also took part in excavations and became an internationally recognized expert in the field. Upon his death, he appointed the city of Düsseldorf as the universal heir to his considerable fortune, provided he founded a museum to house it.
Within the collection, the ancient and pre-Columbian ceramics, rare stoneware vases, Islamic ceramics, majolica, ceramics by contemporary artists, a vast collection of precious porcelain and the entire Asian sector stand out in particular. A particularly noteworthy attraction is an Islamic ceramic dome, rebuilt in the museum rooms.
