The most diverse luxury goods are produced or traded in Bruges during the 17th and 18th centuries: embroidery, furniture, bells, and silverware, etc. The quality of the craftsmanship is often exquisite.

This is primarily due to the makers' talent. However, the craft guilds, associations of people that practise the same profession, also play an important role. They were set up in the Middle Ages and impose high quality standards on their members' production. For example, you cannot set up your own business until you have first successfully completed your masterpiece. The master craftsman and the guild stamp their products with identification marks to guarantee their quality.

The craft guilds are eager to demonstrate their importance. For example, they take part in processions as a group. Members wear magnificent silver shields, bearing the correct identification marks, of course.

Today, the craft guilds no longer exist, but master craftsmanship in Bruges lives on.

Joris Dumery, bell founder. François Rielandt, goldsmith. Master Lucas, tapestry designer. Franciscus De Vooght, locksmith. Their names probably mean nothing to you. They are the creators of all the beautiful things in this large display case. They take centre stage here. We don't always know the names of the craftsmen who created these products. And some objects are the result of anonymous collective work.

It is evident that after the 1550s, and especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, many artistic trades and crafts flourish in Bruges. There are plenty of customers: merchants and entrepreneurs, the nobility and wealthy citizens, churches and monasteries, rich clergy. They all eagerly order luxury items produced using traditional craftsmanship. Their orders go to artisans in Bruges, but also elsewhere.

Most of the objects in the display case are made in Bruges, or have ended up here as a result of trade or a commission. They are made to be used, as decoration or to show off. Enjoy their abundance and diversity! And rest assured there are many more treasures to discover in Bruges' churches, historical buildings, and museums.

Did you notice that the tiled floor on the first floor has now made way for a creaky wooden floor?

You are standing in front of a piece of textile approximately two metres long and one metre wide, with the most exquisite embroidery. A painting on linen, if you like, created using gold and silver thread and coloured silk... That’s how you could describe this antependium, produced in a Bruges workshop in the 1540s. We call it embroidery. The employees who worked at the atelier remain anonymous.

Antependium is from the Latin ‘to hang before’. And indeed, the textile hung in front of an altar, in this case in the convent church of the Bruges Augustinian sisters. It meant that the altar was always beautifully embellished and it served as a focal point for worshippers.

What is depicted on the textile? 28 holy figures: Mary, the apostles, holy virgins. The architecture is reminiscent of the Late Gothic. But closer examination reveals that most figures appear twice! There is an explanation for this: this antependium has been created from decorated borders of other textiles from churches or monasteries, such as a chasuble, a priest’s cassock. The antependium is therefore recycled and it is an assemblage.

This hefty giant is 34 cm high and is an arrow weight, good for over 30 kilograms. It is a masterpiece of bronze casting, and a model of precision work. This device was used to weigh items such as gold, silver, and precious spices and herbs. A task that had to be meticulously performed, down to the gram.

See how exquisitely the casing is decorated with dragon heads and female busts. The casing contains ten small barrels or weights, which fit neatly inside each other. The total weight of all the barrels is equal to that of the casing, and each component weighs exactly twice as much as the smaller one that fits inside it. Talk about precision work.

Albertus Weinmann junior made this weight in Nuremberg, in Germany, in 1568. There were 33 blacksmiths and copper founders in his family! You can see the name of the city ‘Nuremberg’ twice in the inscription on the lid, as well as the coat of arms of the city, which specialised in producing weights.

This tactile element consists of two parts. In the first part you find out how a bell is cast. In the second part you can feel the result. A little later there is a video showing the production process. The video has no sound but we include the description of the video in the explanation for this tactile station.

This tactile panel takes the form of a landscape-oriented rectangle. The title is 'How is a bell made?'.

In the first part of the tactile element we explain the casting process. This part corresponds to the left side of the tactile panel. If you work your way from the top down you first feel a vertical dotted line. After a while, on both sides of the dotted line, you can feel two upright elements, which vary slightly. This is the opening at the top of the mould into which the metal is poured.

Allow your fingers to find their way through the opening and the irregular shapes that follow left and right. It doesn't take long until you end up at the edge. You can now continue to follow the opening left or right. It doesn't matter which side you choose because the bell is completely symmetrical. You will feel a short horizontal section that soon turns into a flowing line downwards. At the end the line thickens. Can you feel that the surface you are following is accentuated with small dots? This will be the final bell and is coloured yellow on the tactile panel.

The material on the outside is white and feels smooth. This is the casting mould. The material on the inside is a dark colour and is also smooth. This is the core. If you move your fingers from the core to the inside of the bell you will feel a brick structure. The brick structure forms the beginning of the production process, as shown in the video.

The video starts with the carillon drum slowly rotating, followed by details on a bronze bell.

In a modern workshop, a man very carefully stacks bricks to 'construct' the skeleton of a bell. Where necessary, the bell founder cuts pieces off the stones to make them fit. The stones lie on a structure that slowly rotates. He then applies a white powder to the rotating baseplate. Slowly he builds up the inside of the bell until he reaches the top of the brick structure. The profile of the future bell rotates along with the baseplate and pushes away the excess material. Over time, the inside of the 'bell' is created on the baseplate.

In the next stage the man pours wax over the bell and the layer of wax is built up as thick as the final bell will be. The man painstakingly applies the text in dark letters as well as a decorative edge.

Finally, he adds the top element of the bell, with which the bell will later be attached to the beams of the bell tower. This is also where the metal is poured in. This element corresponds to the irregular shapes you just felt at the top of the bell and rather resembles a crown. Now that the wax bell is ready, the man uses a brush to smear a thick grey liquid over the bell.

An iron structure, consisting of metal rings, which are wide at the bottom and narrower as they approach the top, is then pushed over the now metal-coloured bell. The structure is placed over the bell from above and then filled with a sandy material. When the metal structure is removed, the wax inside is melted and the print of the bell is preserved in the metal structure. The inner bell is now completely cleaned and the mould is reinserted over it.

A man throws metal rods into a burning oven, after which the liquid metal flows out of the oven. It has a bright yellow glow. Several men in protective clothing pour the metal from a large tank into the top of the mould.

Later, the metal structure is removed in several pieces, revealing the new bell. With a hoist, the bell is raised and put upside down in a machine. Metal is scraped off the inside to achieve the right sound.

The video ends with bells hanging in a tower. A carillonist plays the bells by banging his fists on keys, which are actually protruding wooden sticks. This concludes the video.

On the right side of the tactile panel you can explore the finished bell. This is a real bronze bell fixed to the panel. At the top you can feel the crown, which consists of two metal elements perpendicular to each other. Note the small openings in the crown. They correspond to the irregular shapes you felt in the first part of the panel. On the bell you can feel ridges and letters that were applied to it. The letters form the name of the bell founder. It says 'Dumery me fecit' or 'I was made by Dumery'.

The next element you can explore corresponds to number 40 in the audio guide and is found in room 13. To reach this room take the stairs diagonally behind you. First there is one step leading down and then you head up the spiral staircase and enter the nearest room. Be careful of the small step down. In these rooms you will find numbers 33 to 38. The tactile panel is located in the next room on the right, room 13, once again with two steps up. The tactile element is located between the first and second window on your right.

If you want to stay here in room 9 for a while and carry on listening, go to number 31.

You are standing in front of a painting measuring approximately 1.50 by 2.10 metres, called ‘De eed van de kleermakers’ (The oath of the tailors). It is a painting of a large group of men in a hall. The hall has three tall windows and two statues are affixed to the wall in between the windows. High on the wall behind the men hang two more group portraits.

It's 1 November 1754. We are looking at the stately meeting room of the Bruges guild of tailors. The six board members of the guild are sitting behind a long table. But what is the group of men on the left doing here? They are clearly poor. Well, it's All Saints' Day, and every year, on the first of November, the craft guild donates clothes to thirteen poor souls. The guild pays for this with money from the legacy of... Louis de Gruuthuse, whose will states that they must use the money to provide clothing for the poor.

The items of clothing lie waiting on the right. Two of the poor have already received their clothes and so they look like guild members. The rest of the group are still waiting. The one whose turn is next is already half undressed. Behind him stands a man in rags, leaning on a begging staff, holding out his hand in a pleading gesture. Behind this man is a one-legged man, supported by crutches. The group also includes a blind man: his eyes are covered with a piece of cloth and he is holding a long stick.

The two statues in between the three windows represent a Madonna and Saint Anna. Anna is the patron saint of the craft guild. The painting on the left-hand side of the back wall is a group portrait of a previous executive board.

Guilds have existed since the Middle Ages. These associations united people working in the same profession. There was no choice: anyone who wanted to be, for example, a tailor, painter, silversmith or butcher in a city like Bruges, Ghent or Ypres had to join. Otherwise you couldn’t become an independent master. You could call it a form of protectionism: local practitioners of a profession controlled who practised that profession in their city. The guilds also guaranteed the quality of the products. They established rules and regulations for this purpose.

And they were social clubs. People met up there, the organisation paid for the funerals of members, and sometimes for the accommodation of retired former members or their widows. They also performed charitable work, as this painting shows.

In front of you in the display case is an insculpation plate or hallmark plate, an extremely important piece of documentation. Why is it so important? Well, the copper plate, measuring 37 by 18 cm records no fewer than 186 names of Bruges goldsmiths from the period 1567-1636. In addition to their names, you can see their identification mark, or hallmark. It’s a kind of logo. Goldsmiths had to mark all their products with it. This way, their professional organisation, the guild, knew who had made what. And the quality could be checked.

Thanks to this plate we know all the names and hallmarks of Bruges' goldsmiths spanning a period of seventy years. We can also deduce from this that many were related to each other. And just like the guild at the time, we still know who is responsible for creating a particular artefact!

If you wanted to become a master of a discipline, like these 186 goldsmiths, you first had to produce what was known as a masterpiece. The steel lock in the display case, with a partially visible mechanism, is one example by a locksmith. Franciscus De Vooght produced it in 1794 to prove he had effectively mastered his profession after completing his apprenticeship with a master locksmith. When Franciscus’ masterpiece was approved, he was able to establish himself as a master in Bruges and become a member of the guild. The masterpiece served to protect the profession and the quality of the craftsmanship.

The year 1794 appears on the lock. An unfortunate case of bad timing, as this was the year the French Revolutionary Army invaded Flanders. Four years later, the guilds were finished, along with the obligation to produce a masterpiece. Did Franciscus De Vooght continue to work as a locksmith? Probably, but we can't know for certain.