CARVED STONE PANEL FROM HAARLEM
CARVED STONE PANEL FROM WORKUM
CARVED STONE PANELS FROM MIDDELBURG, ZEELAND (HOUSE DATED 1590)
CARVED STONE PANEL FROM HAARLEM
The olden craftsmen respected tradition. Forms that became established by custom were handed down from generation to generation. Certain ornaments continued to be used, almost unaltered, over a very long period. Not that patterns were slavishly followed; on the contrary, each man gave his own interpretation of what he knew had served so well, and fashioned his work in his own way. But he remembered something of that which had gone before. Traditions of ornamentation were just as much founded upon accumulated experience as were the main styles of architecture. The worker saw around him the forces of Nature, active yet unchanging, the abiding waterways, the ancient churches standing as they had done in times long past, and it was in a spirit of respect for the permanence of spiritual and material things that he pursued his craft. This was altogether good. Methods of workmanship, the treatment of features, and types of enrichment, were gradually evolved. They were governed by ordered principles that slowly grew together and became established, principles that served to check the introduction of inharmonious innovations which would have been out of sympathy with all those forms that, as a whole, were customary and usual.