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. About 1300 the influence of Byzantium had waned, and the Gothic style was bursting into full bloom. For the next two centuries it held full sway, and was then pushed aside by the Renaissance, which made itself felt at the end of the fifteenth century.

At the end of the sixteenth century we find the Renaissance fully developed; and for the next fifty years Flanders is the willing slave of Rubens and his school. The Decadence quickly follows.

The provinces that now constitute Holland and Belgium went hand in hand in the Decorative Arts until about 1600. If there was any difference, Holland was more influenced by German and Flanders by French Art. After the establishment of the Dutch trade with the Far East at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Dutch and Flemish Art diverge.

In the following chapters I have tried to trace these influences and developments.

In illustrating the book I have gone to the original works of the great masters of design De Vries, Van de Passe, Marot and others. As for Dutch interiors, nothing can convey a clearer idea of the home than the famous pictures by the Great and Little Masters Jan Steen, Teniers, Rembrandt, Cocques, Metsu, Maes, Terburg, Dou, Weenix, Van Hoogstraten, Troost, etc., etc., many of whose famous canvases are eproduced here.

I also include photographic reproductions of authentic examples of Dutch and Flemish furniture preserved in the Cluny, Rijks, Itedelijk and other museums.

In my attempt to reconstruct Dutch and Flemish interiors of past days, 1 have consulted not only histories, memoirs and books of travel, but wills and inventories as well.

I wish to thank Mr. Arthur Shadwell Martin for valuable research and aid for both text and illustrations.

In the turbulent days of the Middle Ages, the goods of the Church were the only ones respected, and, sometimes, not even those. The castles afforded protection to those in their immediate vicinity, but rival feudal ambitions rendered the calling of a luxurious craftsman more or less precarious. The abbey walls always sheltered a community of carpenters, joiners, leather-dressers, iron-workers, goldsmiths, sculptors, painters and calligraphists.

Towards the end of the Crusades, the new organization of the Communes, after the period of anarchy, becomes firmly established. Industry, commerce and art begin to make rapid strides in the towns, and crafts- men form themselves into corporations that receive special privileges from their titular overlords. So long as the artists of the ecclesiastical school remained under the protection of the monastic houses, they naturally Dutch and Flemish Furniture followed a hieratic road. The ornamentation they were called upon to produce for the Church, they reproduced when luxurious furniture was required in domestic life. The great Corporations, however, as they grew in wealth and power, demanded something superior to, or at least, different from, the work of their forerunners. In the monastic houses, it was long before this influence made itself felt ; but among the secular clergy it received a hearty welcome.

The distinguishing character of Mediaeval work is the freedom of execution allowed to the workman. The architect decided on heights, dimensions, dispositions of parts and profiles of stalls, or armoires ; but the details were left to be worked out by the artistic ability of the skilled workman. Individual expression was allowed full play, while the original conception of the designer was respected.

Gradually, as the Communes became more powerful and were able to afford stable protection to their members, the spirit of association and solidarity tended to break away from exclusively ecclesiastical art.

The art of wood carving was developed principally in the production of choir-stalls and altar-pieces. The building of a beautiful temple to the glory of God was usually begun by some pious founder from motives of gratitude or repentance. It was dedicated to some patron saint, and the work was carried out under the supervision of some abbey or other religious house. Often the church or cathedral was originally the abbey church itself. In early Mediaeval days, the arts and sciences were confined to the cloister, and the embellishmen! of the Holy House was a labor of love. Many an obscure monk put all that was beautiful and fanciful in his nature into the production of carvings in stone and wood that have never been surpassed.

The precise date at which choir-stalls were introduced into churches is not known; but it is certain that they were in general use as soon as the Pointed Style was finally established, that is to say, not later than the thirteenth century. When the sanctuary was railed off from the rest of the church, the priests, in their light garb, naturally wanted to be protected from cold, damp and draught by woodwork, which, like the high back of a settle, enclosed the choir.

The stall is composed of several parts: the socle, the tablet, or seat, half of which can be raised, as it turns on hinges, the half thus raised, called the misericorde, serves as a support for a person resting, half standing, half sitting; the paraclose, or sides that separate it from the adjoining stalls [the forward extremities of these are called museaux (snouts)]; the arm rest; the high back ; the dai's, or baldaquin; and, lastly, the woodwork at each end of a set of stalls, called joules (cheeks).

With the exceptions of the socle and seat, every part of the stall in all the great Gothic churches has received very richly carved ornamentation, which is often remarkable for its profusion of detail.

The misericorde is ordinarily decorated with foliage and fruits; but it often presents fantastic objects, such as dragons, sirens, dogs, bears, and hybrid monsters of every kind. Frequently also we find personages in ridiculous and gross attitudes, and all sorts of human and animal caricatures. The paraclose is decorated with Gothic tracery in the earliest examples; and later with foliage, tendrils and branches of elegant curve. These are usually open-work, the pierced oak producing a charmingly light and graceful effect. Sometimes here also we find human and animal forms. The high backs are enriched with bas-reliefs, the subjects of which are by no means taken exclusively from the Old or New Testament. On the contrary, here the carvers have given free rein to their fancy by reproducing scenes of private life, and graceful compositions of flowers and fruits with little animals intermingled. Sometimes the subjects are framed in clusters of colonnettes, or in pilasters decorated with niches containing statues. Sometimes also statues of considerable size adorn this woodwork. The jouees receive the most beautiful decorations, and frequently these side entrances to the stalls are ornamented by statues. The dais, which at first was merely a shelter of boards on an inclined plane over the whole range of stalls, began to assume great importance in the fifteenth century. It curved into vaultings; and very soon each seat received a separate dais decorated with ogives, pinnacles, little steeples, pendentives, culs-de-lampe and crockets; and the skilful carver did not hesitate to introduce delightful statuettes into the company of all these decorations.

A fine example of a Mediaeval carved oak stall is shown in Plate I. By the richness of the carving it must originally have held an important position in some choir. Richly ornamented with Gothic shafting and tracery, it is a splendid example of architectural furniture. The misericorde represents a knight fighting with a dragon. The scene depicted with the chisel on the back is the favourite Judgment of Solomon. Around the elbows are various animals and men on all fours. The side scrolls under the dais are decorated with angels playing trumpets.

The names of the carvers who embellished the Mediaeval choirs have, as a rule, been lost; and fire and iconoclasm have destroyed most of their work. Some few relics, however, of the splendour of wood-carving as it existed before the Renaissance are still to be found. For elaborate oak carving of the fifteenth century, it would be hard to find a more interesting example than the carved oak stalls in the great church of Bolsward (Broe derkerk) in Holland. This was built in 1280 A.D.; but the richly carved late Gothic choir stalls date from about 1450.