Absolutely Amazing & Top of The Line. The Rarest of All And Most Difficult To Come By. Only 2000 Of These Around The World. The Waag (weigh house) in Gouda is one of The Netherland's Most Important Cultural & beautiful monuments in town and dates from 1668. Designed by the leading architect of the times Pieter Post. During the summer, cheese is weighed here every thursday morning in an attractive ceremony drawing many tourists. Anyone interested or hungry can also take the opportunity to taste some authentic Gouda cheese. The old weigh house of Gouda is also a cheese museum nowadays. KLM introduced the houses to their Royal Class passengers first in 1952. Although the introduction was a great idea, KLM had to overcome a practical problem. Apparently a law forbid airlines to give presents to their passengers above the value of 75 US$ cents. KLM got around this obstacle by giving passengers a complementary Dutch gin sealed in a Delft Blue miniature house. The KLM house grew in popularity, however KLM’s competitors complained to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), that the value of the gift was more than 75 US$ cents. In a court case KLM defended that there were no regulations on how a drink should be served. KLM won the case and added more houses to the collection every few years. In 1964 a total of 20 houses were issued, in 1970 there were 45 different houses, and until 1993, KLM issued a total of 60 houses. KLM extended the number of houses to a total of 75, celebrating the 75th anniversary on October 7th in 1994. Since then, KLM has been adding one new house every year on October 7th, making the number of houses equal to their anniversary. On certain Middle-East routes KLM offered, for a limited period of time, a house in the form of an ashtray instead of a house filled with gin. World Business Class passengers on certain routes to the Middle-East receive currently a house that is “empty due to customs regulations”. About Delft Blue: Gouda Plateel is an expression for glossy and mat glazed pottery produced by plateel factories in Gouda. Gouda Plateel finds is origin in Jugendstil and art-nouveau ceramics. The plateel factories flourished at the beginning of the last century. However in the years after the Second World War competition was fierce and many factories had to close down their business or went bankrupt.

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