Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Frontispiece. Bed by Daniel Marot.
DUTCH AND FLEMISH FURNITURE
PREFACE
No special inducement need be held out to an educatedEnglishman at the present day to take an interestin a particular field of the arts and crafts of the LowCountries. Long before the nobles of Flanders, Franceand England were associated in attempts to free theholy places from the pollution of infidel possession, thedwellers on the opposite coasts of England, Normandyand the Netherlands had been bound together by manydynastic and trade bonds. As we follow the courseof history, we find that the interests of the Englishand the Flemings were inextricably connected; andthere was a constant stream of the manufactures of theLow Countries pouring into English ports. The Englishsupplied much of the raw material upon which theFlemings depended for subsistence. In mediaeval daysthe inhabitants of the Low Countries could always beforced by English statecraft to help the Plantagenetkings in their continental intrigues by the mere cuttingoff of the supply of wool. Later, the community of tastesand interests in Reformation days drew the races closertogether; and all through Elizabethan days, and thenonwards till the close of the Marlborough campaigns,the inhabitants of England and the Netherlands wereon terms of intimate acquaintance, socially and industrially.
viIn the following pages, therefore, constant evidencewill appear of the influence of the arts and crafts of theLow Countries on English manufactures and importations.Trade rivalry frequently gave rise to coolnessbetween England and Holland, and to an ingloriouswar in the days of the Merry Monarch. The latter periodI have treated at considerable length on account of theimportance of the Oriental trade on the interior decorationsof Dutch homes.
On taking a general survey of the Decorative Artsof the Low Countries, we notice several well-definedperiods and influences.
Materials are too meagre for us to learn much aboutdomestic interiors during the Dark Ages, but we knowthat, in common with England and Northern France,Scandinavian Art largely prevailed.
The feudal lords of the territories that now formedthe Netherlands were enthusiastic in assuming the cross;and for two centuries the arts and crafts of Byzantiumand the luxury of the