



Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









                      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 Elizabeth