Dutch and Flemish Furniture

by Esther Singleton

“Many of the things were so curious that we could assign neither use nor ornament to them, and much of the interest of the collection was lost to us for want of some one to explain the uses of what we saw. Probably the following paragraph, which I have just seen in a weekly newspaper, may give the true explanation of the small size of some of the objects: The rich Dutch burghers of old believed very much in teaching children by means of their playthings, and used to give them elaborate dolls’ houses furnished with utensils in solid silver that worked perfectly, and were exact models of those in daily use in the family. There were silver lamps and coffee pots, dishes, spice boxes and everything in miniature. Thus the little Dutch girls were housewives from their babyhood.

“Along the top of this rare old piece of furniture was suspended a row of porcelain plates. About the room were curiously carved and designed chairs and tables, some of the latter finely inlaid; and on the wall I particularly noticed mirrors with tortoiseshell frames. The waning light left us too little time to examine the contents of the room in detail, but we all thought it the choicest thing of the kind we had ever seen in public or private.”

In a study of Dutch furniture the canal boat should not be overlooked. More than two centuries ago an English traveller asked if there were not more people living on the water in Holland than on the land. In that country canals lead from town to town and village to village, and boats perform transport service. Vegetables, fruits, flowers and dairy produce, flour and all kinds of merchandise are transported in boats; furniture is moved from house to house by means of the canal boats, and passengers are also carried.

Many families know no other home than the trekschuyt: cradled on the drowsy waters the inmates grow to manhood and womanhood, and die in these floating homes.

The traveller in Holland never fails to be interested in the canal boats that are constantly arriving and departing in the grachten of the large cities; but he rarely sees their interiors. The following description by Alphonse Esquiros shows how these canal homes are furnished, and gives us an idea of the life spent there:

“Along nearly the whole length, which is about thirty feet, runs a box or wooden house, frequently painted green; the roof, on which the sailors walk to perform sundry operations, being covered with a layer of pounded cockle shells. This house is divided into two compartments or cabins; the larger one, situated near the prow, is common to passengers and luggage. Here, during the winter, the worthy people, shut up as in a box, swim along in a cloak of tobacco smoke, which relieves the tedium of the voyage. In summer the wooden shutters are removed, and the hatch is raised from the orifice by which the travellers descend. The second compartment is the cabinet, called in Dutch the roef, which is entered through folding doors. The second cabin is small, but fitted up with some degree of taste. The windows, four or six in number, are glazed and have red or white curtains, according to the season. In the centre is a table with a copper vessel containing fire, and another smaller one to receive cigar ash, both cleaned and polished in a manner only found in Holland. Add to this, to complete the furniture, a mat, a looking-glass, and, in winter for the ladies, a foot-warmer, called the stoef, containing a small earthenware vessel with two or three lumps of lighted peat in it. Along two sides of this cabin run cushioned benches, on which the travellers sit down opposite to each other. Sometimes there are on a shelf a few volumes belonging to the boat and forming a floating library at the service of the studious passengers. The whole national character is revealed in this simple and minute attention to comfort. At the bows, the space not occupied by the cabinet is filled with merchandise, bales, and barrels; while the poop is left to travellers who wish to take the fresh air, and the helmsman, who steers and smokes the while with the regularity of a steamer....

“On the trekschuyten floats old Holland, with its language, manners and conscientious and powerful originality. There are some trekschuyten in which you pass the night; at about six in the evening, in the event of the master being polite (and we never met any who were not so), he invites you to take tea. You then see a little cabinet produced, containing cups, sugar-basin, and teapot of black earthenware, which is not inelegant. The kettle is placed on a species of stove covered with Chinese designs, and containing a vessel filled with burning peat. At night the roef is divided into two parts—a saloon and a small sleeping-room, of which the curtains are raised. A common bed, occupying the entire width of the cabin, and on which men and women sleep honestly side by side, invites you to take your share of the universal calm and rest of nature. This bed is composed of a mattress and counterpane, and you lie down on it full dressed. During this period the boat continues its noiseless voyage through the waters, which divide in a silver furrow on either side the prow.”

The Dutchman has always been famous for his clinging to cleanliness, order and symmetry. Cleanliness in the house and order in the garden, with its clipped trees and hedges of formal designs and stiff flower beds, still persist. The Dutch house of the present day is described by the Rev. J. Ballingal In the North Holland Polders as follows: “Their houses are as often furnished in very modern style, though the furniture is sure to be solid and good. They have the utmost contempt for anything sham and flimsy. In their jewellery, of which a great deal is worn, they would never think of buying false diamonds or imitation coral. Their houses are models of neatness and cleanliness, but there is no trace of aesthetic feeling. Symmetry is admired above everything. Trees planted round the house at equal distances, trimmed to an exact height, and whitewashed to a certain height of the trunk, windows and doors to correspond, gates freshly painted, and gravel walks without a foot-print—that is the country ideal. There is a story of a Boer who fancied a piano would be a handsome addition to his best room, and having bought one and got it placed, he returned a few weeks after to the piano warehouse. ‘Did the instrument give satisfaction?’ the dealer anxiously inquired. Oh, yes! yes! I’ve no complaint to make, for nobody has even touched it. What annoys us is we don’t like the look of it in the room. It is not symmetrisch, so I’ve come to buy another, exactly the same, to stand in the opposite corner.’ Such a story is credible enough when one sees the exactly similar way in which, through a large district, houses are built, and trees planted round them, as if every detail were compulsory. The love of cleanliness, too, has its extravagances, as, for instance, in the neighbourhood we speak of we once enjoyed the comic spectacle of a man sitting astride on the ridge of his house, with a pail slung round his neck, scrubbing away at the tiles.”

Holland has not escaped the present taste for the collection of antiquities; but in that country where there is so deep a love of home, and where the peasants guard their possessions with the same tenacity and affection as the rich do their heirlooms, the collector is only rewarded after long years of patient search. However, many of the wealthy merchants and travellers, who are spending the well-earned afternoon and evening of their lives in their country seats near Arnhem, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Leyden, Dordrecht, Middelburg, Maestricht and other large cities and small towns, are able to show rare and interesting relics of the past. A house of a rich traveller will reflect naturally enough the wanderings as well as the taste of its owner. The spoils of Java, Dutch Guiana, the West Indies and other colonies, not to mention those of Egypt, Spain and Italy, adorn his rooms and render his cabinets highly interesting.

As a rule his study and the boudoirs of his wife and daughters, his drawing-room with its adjoining conservatory, his library and his bedrooms are furnished in the latest French taste. The dining-room is frequently painted in pale green, and here are displayed in the cupboards vitrines, cabinets, and on the hanging shelves his family treasures, consisting of curious and beautifully engraved glass, silver, and choice sets and individual pieces of porcelain. If, however, as is often the case, the owner is the collector, then he takes especial delight in the “antique-room,” which he has fitted up in the style of a cabinet of the seventeenth century. The general impression of this apartment is brown, derived not only from the panelled ceiling, high wainscot and carved chimney-piece, but from the wall hangings of leather with its raised patterns of faded gold and the high-backed carved furniture.