DUTCH AND FLEMISH FURNITURE [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE. _Bed by Daniel Marot._ ] DUTCH AND FLEMISH FURNITURE By ESTHER SINGLETON Author of “French and English Furniture,” etc _With numerous illustrations_ NEW YORK: THE McCLURE COMPANY 44–60 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1907 _Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, France, and London_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE No special inducement need be held out to an educated Englishman at the present day to take an interest in a particular field of the arts and crafts of the Low Countries. Long before the nobles of Flanders, France and England were associated in attempts to free the holy places from the pollution of infidel possession, the dwellers on the opposite coasts of England, Normandy and the Netherlands had been bound together by many dynastic and trade bonds. As we follow the course of history, we find that the interests of the English and the Flemings were inextricably connected; and there was a constant stream of the manufactures of the Low Countries pouring into English ports. The English supplied much of the raw material upon which the Flemings depended for subsistence. In mediaeval days the inhabitants of the Low Countries could always be forced by English statecraft to help the Plantagenet kings in their continental intrigues by the mere cutting off of the supply of wool. Later, the community of tastes and interests in Reformation days drew the races closer together; and all through Elizabethan days, and then onwards till the close of the Marlborough campaigns, the inhabitants of England and the Netherlands were on terms of intimate acquaintance, socially and industrially. In the following pages, therefore, constant evidence will appear of the influence of the arts and crafts of the Low Countries on English manufactures and importations. Trade rivalry frequently gave rise to coolness between England and Holland, and to an inglorious war in the days of the Merry Monarch. The latter period I have treated at considerable length on account of the importance of the Oriental trade on the interior decorations of Dutch homes. On taking a general survey of the Decorative Arts of the Low Countries, we notice several well-defined periods and influences. Materials are too meagre for us to learn much about domestic interiors during the Dark Ages, but we know that, in common with England and Northern France, Scandinavian Art largely prevailed. The feudal lords of the territories that now formed the Netherlands were enthusiastic in assuming the cross; and for two centuries the arts and crafts of Byzantium and the luxury of the East dominated Western Europe.