Jacob Hooy & Co

A shop that stayed the same

Jacob Hooy & Co is a small herb and apothecary shop on the Kloveniersburgwal, and it has looked much the same since 1743. You step in from the canal and the smell reaches you first. Dried herbs, tea, spice and liquorice all hang in the air together.

It is worth the walk because it is a working shop, not a museum. Nobody asks you for a ticket. You can stand inside, look at the walls, and leave with a paper bag of something if you like. Ten or fifteen minutes is enough.

Look up, then look around

Start outside, above the door. The head you see there is a gaper, a figure with an open mouth. In the Netherlands it is the traditional sign of an apothecary. Once you know it, you start spotting gapers over old chemists' doors around the country.

Inside, look at the walls first. They are lined with wooden drawers, each labelled with the herb or spice kept in it. Behind the counter and along the shelves stand big jars. Many of them hold liquorice, which the Dutch call drop. It comes in more shapes and strengths than most visitors expect, and some of it is salty rather than sweet. If you have never tried the salty kind, ask the person at the counter what to start with. Do it with a straight face and a small bag.

Then look at the details. The counter, the scoops, the old labels and the way things are weighed out all belong to a time when this was how you bought medicine. The shop still sells herbs, teas and natural remedies, so the goods are meant to be used and not only looked at.

Why an apothecary here

In the eighteenth century Amsterdam was a trading city, and spices, herbs and strange plants came in by ship. A shop like this sat at the end of that chain. Before modern pharmacies, people went to an apothecary or herbalist for tea, powders and tonics, and a shop that sold herbs by weight was an ordinary part of the street.

What is unusual is that this one survived. Most such shops were modernised, moved or closed. Jacob Hooy kept its drawers, its jars and its look, and that is why people now cross the street to see it. The date, 1743, is the one the shop itself gives as its beginning.