KLM’s 105th Delft Blue House collectible honors a mansion on 3 canals

08.10.2024 - 12:11 / thepointsguy.com / Marjan Rintel

Amenity kit cases that can double as evening purses and salt and pepper shakers in the shape of airplanes are among the cool AvGeek things you can swipe off airplanes guilt-free.

But if you fly on a KLM intercontinental business-class flight, you can walk off the plane with a house.

Granted, it's a miniature house ... a numbered, collectible, miniature Delft Blue house in the shape of a notable historic or landmark building in the Netherlands or abroad, to be exact.

And did we mention it's filled with Bols Genever, a Dutch gin?

KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, began gifting its intercontinental first- and business-class passengers these tiny houses in the 1950s. The tradition began because a cocktail served in a collectible container was how the carrier cleverly skirted restrictions limiting the value of gifts that passengers could receive from airlines.

In 1994, on the carrier's 75th birthday, a catch-up batch of houses was issued to match the number of houses to the age of the airline. Nowadays, a new house is released with fanfare each year on Oct. 7, KLM's birthday.

This year, to celebrate KLM's 105th anniversary, the airline revealed its 105th Delft Blue House.

This one honors a 17th-century heritage house in Amsterdam known officially as "Het Huis aan de Drie Grachten," or "The House on Three Canals." Built in the Dutch Renaissance style and renovated in 1909, the Dutch national monument faces a canal on, you guessed it, three sides and has both diagonal and straight angles.

"It's not the oldest house in Amsterdam, but it's the oldest privately owned house in Amsterdam and one of the most photographed monuments in the city," said historian Mark Zegeling during a canal tour of this and other Amsterdam buildings that have served as models for KLM's miniature Delft Blue houses over the years. "You can see from the three sides that the building — which was originally two buildings — has three different facades, or faces."

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Zegeling is the author of "Little Kingdom by the Sea," a regularly updated two-book set with detailed descriptions and histories of each building in the KLM Delft Blue House series.

Each year, the identity of KLM's newest Delft Blue House is kept tightly under wraps until the evening of the big reveal. As is tradition, the big reveal takes place at a celebration held either in the building being featured or in a building nearby each year.

This year was no exception. On Oct. 7, KLM CEO Marjan Rintel presented the first copy of the Delft Blue miniature of The House on Three Canals to Arthur van Dijk, the king's commissioner for the province of North Holland. Because the house is privately owned, the reveal party took