Menukaart Château de Haarzuylens diner en dessert 1896

This is Karel Petrus Cornelis de Bazel’s menu card for a dinner and dessert at Château de Haarzuylens. De Bazel, a Dutch architect, engraver, and designer, made this menu card in the context of the Dutch Arts and Crafts movement. Looking at this menu card, we glimpse the intertwining of wealth, taste, and social identity. The card itself, with its elegant design and heraldic imagery, speaks to a desire to create a unified aesthetic experience for the wealthy patrons of the Château. The diners, insulated by their class privilege, engage in rituals of consumption and display, reinforcing their status and distinction. The visual language of the menu reflects a conscious effort to craft a sense of belonging to an exclusive social sphere. The menu card reminds us of the power of design to shape our perceptions and experiences, to create worlds that both reflect and reinforce existing social structures. It invites us to consider how seemingly innocuous objects can be imbued with cultural meaning.