,
Nieuw-Loosdrecht. De Mol was born in 1726 at
Midlum, near
Harlingen and, like his father, studied theology in
Leiden. His first post was at
's-Gravenpolder in
Zeeland, before moving in 1752 to
Oud-Loosdrecht. There he got to know one of the richest women in Amsterdam,
Anna de Haze who had a country house in the village and a collection of
Meissen porcelain. In 1774 De Mol bought a clay part, stored in the
Muiderslot, left over from the porcelain factory in
Weesp. That factory started in 1759 by
Bertrand Philip, count of Gronsveld,
bailiff of
Muiden and member of the
Admiralty of Amsterdam. The factory was declared a failure in 1770, and hardly produced a little more for its last two years. De Mol began with experiments in his garden shed behind the parsonage, opposite the church in Oud-Loosdrecht. In 1774, he started producing
porcelain as a way of creating employments for the local population in the impoverished peat district. A part of the production process, however, was sited in
Bilthoven. On a country estate, property of the youngest brother of
Belle van Zuylen, stood a "pletmolen met stamperij" (mill with grinding facilities), where
feldspar, but possibly also cheap Chinese porcelain was added and ground up. The raw materials were mixed up with suitable white clay (from England?) and
quartz in a cellar in
Utrecht, and shipped to Oud-Loosdrecht. The factory at Oud-Loosdrecht employed sixty men, of which twenty acted as painters and 25 were children, who also were trained in drawing. Under the foreign employees was
Louis Victor Gerverot, then known as a painter of exotic birds on porcelain. To finance the business, a few regents in Amsterdam, along with his sister-in-law, Eva de Mol-van Eibergen, acted as guarantor, jointly invested 200,000
guilders in the factory. In 1779, De Mol was laureated by the
Economics Branch for the care of his workforce. De Mol took former soldiers from
Surinam to employ. The managers of the
Suriname Society had made contact with him and convened in his business. J.G. Eichhorn, a German, who had a stiff right arm, was given a salary of two guilders per week and the Association provided a same sum . Nevertheless, De Mol - who had in the meantime become a patriot - had major difficulties keeping his head above water. His products were expensive: a cup and saucer costing seven guilder, then more than a week's salary for most. De Mol's main fear was his competitor
Anton Lyncke in the Hague, who imported white porcelain from Germany to the Hague for painting. De Mol organised special lotteries to finance his work, but in 1781 was again forced to borrow money from the Amsterdam banker and art collector
Jan Hope. Barbara van der Hoeven, Hope's wife, came into the possession of 25% of the shares in the Manufactuur Old-Loosdrecht (M.O.L.). ==Old age==