The Drapers Guild

About the Drapers Guild

The Staalhof was a 17th-century building complex on the corner of Staalstraat and Groenburgwal. The complex was the centre of the cloth industry and dominated the area. It was here that fabrics were checked by inspectors, the "drapers", who were so named by the way they made use of the samples (test strips) to be processed. If you want to to place De Staalmeesters from Rembrandt's painting here then you'll need to look very closely indeed. Regardless the drapers worked directly behind these external walls in the painting where they studied the quality of the materials that their suppliers provided.