After Woman's Delft Blue Houses Were Destroyed in Eaton Fire, Strangers Send Her Dozens More

A woman's childhood home in Pasadena, California was affected by the Eaton fire last month. While many of her family's possessions were lost to the flames, a few of her mother's Delft Blue houses survived. Seeing the state of them, people rushed to help rebuild the collection, sending her 86 new houses to replace the ones that were not recovered.

Delft Blue houses have been around since the 1950s and are given to travelers flying in business class on an intercontinental route on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Each house is filled with Dutch gin and depicts a real Dutch building.

Peggy Powell began collecting the figurines while traveling with her husband, Bob Powell. "KLM is her favorite airline, and she always talked about what a joy it was to fly to Europe on their Business Class flights out of LAX," Powell's daughter, Alexis Murphy, told decorvow.com. "She loves to travel, loves history, and loves beautiful things. The Delft houses encapsulated them all."

Powell had 12 houses that she displayed on a windowsill in her home. After the fire, Murphy and her son returned to her childhood home to see if there was anything to recover. "Everything was gone or destroyed or shattered, but my son was able to dig and found eight houses. Seven were completely intact, and one was broken into pieces," Murphy said.

On January 26, Murphy shared a video on Instagram of the seven houses that survived the fire. She lined them up amongst the rubble with Kacey Musgraves' version of Three Little Birds playing in the background. With all the destruction, Murphy said finding her mother's Delft houses was "a welcome glimmer of something good."

The post received over 20,000 views, and hundreds of people flooded Murphy's inbox with support, offering to send her mom Delft Blue houses from their collections. One Dutch woman living in New York offered her collection of over 80 houses. "I responded, saying just a few would make my mom so happy. I offered to at least pay for the shipping, which she adamantly refused," Murphy says. "We were completely stunned when the boxes arrived with the entire collection."

On February 21, Murphy posted a second video to Instagram, updating those following along with her journey. In the video, she displayed all of the new KLM Delft houses sent to her mother. She wrote that she was "so touched by the outpouring of heartfelt comments and offers to help rebuild her collection."

Powell organized all of her new houses numerically and is studying the history of each on the KLM House App. "Ironically, none of the houses that survived the fire were duplicated in the boxes. It was as if they were waiting for the others to complete the neighborhood. So special," Murphy captioned the Instagram post.

Even though she now has 93 houses, people are still offering to send Powell the Delft Blue houses she is missing in her collection. One viewer commented, "Would you be willing to list what she still needs? I’m sure us collectors can complete the set."