Museum voor Graftrommels
One of the oldest buildings at the Pastoorserf farm in Veenhuizen, dating from 1885, holds 61 ‘grave drums’. Grave drums and funerary wreaths are also restored in the same building.
What a grave drum is
A grave drum is a metal case with a glass cover that held a gift for the deceased, usually a wreath of metal leaves and porcelain flowers or one of glass beads. The earliest date from around 1850; placing them on graves stopped after 1975. About 130 such cases stood in Drenthe’s cemeteries.
What is on display
Alongside early cases and cases from children’s graves is one for a French soldier killed in the First World War, containing a photograph, a bead wreath and part of his uniform jacket. There are also German and French bead wreaths, pictures of the workshops where wreaths were made, and a display of the stamps and dies used for metal petals.
The workshop
The museum and restoration workshop share a building. The foundation uses tools, old factory catalogues and documentation. Missing metal petals are reproduced with stamps and dies and painted; porcelain flowers are shaped and fired by hand. Restored cases have returned to their places in Drenthe (24), Friesland (19), Belgium (18) and Zeeland (13), among others.
Heritage and a book
The foundation began in 2015 as Stichting tot behoud van de Drentse Graftrommels and joined the Netherlands’ Intangible Heritage Network on 20 January 2024. Leo and Pieke van Doorn-Witteveen wrote De grafkrans als funerair erfgoed in Nederland (€22.50 including postage). A second visitor room in the chapel of Goor’s municipal cemetery opens free of charge on the first Sunday of each month from April to September, 2–4 p.m.