Verkade’s cookies and chocolate … traditionally a household name!

Bread, rusk, cookies and chocolate … the Zaan region is also known for its food industry. In a separate section of the Zaans Museum, this world comes back to life in the Verkade Pavilion, which was opened by Queen Beatrix in 2009. The rich history of the Zaan company began in 1886.

The corporate collection of the Verkade company tells its special history through the many original advertising items such as posters, packaging and tins. In addition to a gigantic photo collection, three working production lines for chocolate, cookies and tea lights can be admired. Where the legendary “Girls of Verkade” went to work, children can now wrap a chocolate bar in their self-designed wrapper! And they can also have fun with interactive and educational games … one imagines oneself in a factory from the early 1900s, where the authentic machines are still in full swing and the history of chocolate and cookies comes to life.

In the Verkade treasury, you can see the best and longest-running marketing campaign started more than 100 years ago: the “Verkade albums” with the famous Verkade pictures are all on display here, as well as the original watercolors made for them. Jac. P. Thijsse and Jan Voerman jr. are well-known names as writers and illustrators; but other Dutch writers and painters, such as Henricus Rol, also contributed to the Verkade albums. In total, Verkade published 35 picture albums, between 1903 and 1940, and between 1965 and 1995. The educator and writer Jac. P. Thijsse is now considered the patriarch of nature conservation in the Netherlands; he founded the Natuurmonumenten foundation in 1905. Over the years, two million Verkade albums have been sold in the Netherlands.

Verkade also became famous for its tea lights. In 1898 the production of tea and night lights started in a small factory in Amsterdam, and in 1902 the waxine factory in Zaandam was opened. ‘Waxine’ is a mixture of wax and kerosene, an invention of E.G. Verkade’s English son-in-law, who took the patent from him. Initially the product did not sell very well, but when Verkade received an order of tens of thousands of lights for the coronation feast of the King of England, the lights were unstoppable. Everyone later had Verkade lights in their homes and even the canals in Amsterdam were regularly lit up with them! For more than a century, “Waxine” has been a well-known brand name, coined at the time by Anton Verkade.