Isabella van Leeuwarden

Isabella van Leeuwarden (1696 – 19 June 1773) was a Dutch Mennonite businesswoman and hofje founder of Haarlem.

[1] She married the local poet Pieter Merkman jr., owner of a ribbon-making business, on 8 November 1752 in Haarlem.

Her estate was sold by the local artist and art dealer Vincent Jansz van der Vinne in 1773 and a copy of the catalog lists her collection.

For example, they are both dressed in black without fashionable wrist collars, but the man is holding an expensive watch and the woman is wearing a fur trimmed vlieger.

The company correspondence from her family cloth and ribbon business is preserved in the Amsterdam archives.