Holland (fabric)

“ At the close of the 18th century the influence of imported English earthenware was strongly felt. In Holland workshops were established for painting the English cream-coloured ware with subjects suited to the Dutch taste; and in Germany cream-coloured wares and steingut in imitation of Wedgwood’s productions were manufactured at Cassel, Proskau and elsewhere. The “Delft” ware of Holland during the 17th century was a beautiful decorative ware, in which the Dutch painters caught successfully the spirit, and often the very colour value, of Chinese blue and white porcelain. ”

“ The Dutch shops are brilliantly illuminated, and, although in themselves they do not differ materially from stores of other large European cities, they present at night a very unusual appearance, because of the contrast between the ground floor and the upper part of the house. Below, all is glass, light, color, [Pg 90] and splendor; above, the gloomy façades with their steep sharp lines, steps, and curves. The upper part of the house is plain, dark, and silent—in a word, ancient Holland; the ground floor is the new life—fashion, luxury, and elegance. ”

“ The manufacture of wool was still in its infancy. Holland was the great seat of textile industries, and it had been proposed in influential quarters—under the influence of the example of France—to try to crush the manufacturers of Holland, by prohibiting the export of English wool thither and the import of the Dutch manufactured article, so as to compel the wool to be manufactured into cloth at home. ”

“ HOLLAND and Belgium.—It may be said that long before Holland attempted the production of porcelain she had been making faience or earthen-ware, which is now well known under the name of delft, of which I have given a condensed account elsewhere.
When one remembers that Holland has long winters and cool summers; that her people have not only had to fight their fellow-men, but have had to snatch from the cruel sea a considerable portion of what is now dry land; that she has had to build two hundred miles of broad and strong dikes, and to see that they are always strong and safe ”

“ The weaving of woollen and linen cloths was one of the chief sources of this growing prosperity. A prodigious quantity of cloth and linen was manufactured in all parts of the Netherlands. The maritime prosperity acquired an equal increase by the carrying trade, both in imports and exports. Whole fleets of Dutch and Flemish merchant ships repaired regularly to the coasts of Spain and Languedoc. Flanders was already become the great market for England and all the north of Europe. ”

“ The realism of the Dutch painters is born of their common love of nature; but each one has shown in his work a kind of love peculiarly his own; each one has rendered a different, impression which he has received from nature; and all, starting from the same point, which was the worship of material truth, have arrived at separate and distinct goals. Their realism, then, inciting them to disdain nothing as food for the pencil, has so acted that Dutch art succeeds in representing Holland more completely than has ever been accomplished by any other school in any other country. ”

“ The Dutch manufacture their own woollens, and they are esteemed to be very good. The black cloth of Holland is very well known, which is infinitely of a deeper and superior colour than ours. The principal cloth manufactures are at Leyden and Tielburg. There are also very capital and flourishing manufactures of velvets, silk, and carpets, at Hilversom; and those of linen and table-cloths, which are exquisite, at Overyssel; and numerous paper-mills.
The population of Rotterdam is estimated at sixty thousand inhabitants. Upon the whole, it is a gloomy place to live in ”

“ Realism, favored by the calm and sluggish nature of the Dutch, which enables their artists to restrain their impetuosity, and further aided by the Dutch character, which aims at exactness and refuses to do things by halves, gave to the paintings of the Hollanders another distinctive trait—finish. This they carried to the last possible degree of perfection. Critics say truthfully that in Dutch paintings one may discover the first quality of the nation—patience. ”

“ But there are yet other reasons for this: a country as flat, monotonous, and gray as Holland is has need of color, just as a southern country has need of shadow. The Dutch artists have only followed the dominant taste of the people, who paint their houses, their boats, their palisades, the fences of the fields, and in some places the very trunks of the trees, in the brightest colors; who dress themselves as of yore in clothes of the gayest hues; who love tulips and hyacinths to distraction. Hence all the Dutch painters were great colorists, Rembrandt being the first. ”

“ The sombre attire of the Huizen women is a contrast to most of the traditional costumes of Holland, which are charming, full of gay colour and happy design. The art of dress seems otherwise to be dead in Holland to-day; In the towns the ordinary conventional dress is dull; and in the country it is without any charm. Holland as a whole, omitting the costumes, cannot be said to have any more knowledge of clothes than we have. It is only by the blue linen jackets of the men in the fields that the situation is saved and the Dutch are proved our superiors. ”

“ Maes painted old Dutch housewives, and Metsu young Dutch housewives, to the life; Vermeer and Terburg immortalised Dutch ladies at their spinets; Albert Cuyp toiled to suffuse Dutch meadows and Dutch cows with a golden glow; Jan Steen glorified the humblest Dutch family scenes; Gerard Dou spent whole weeks upon the fingers of a common Dutch hand. In short, art that so long had been at the service only of the Church and the proud, became suddenly, without losing any of its divinity, a fireside friend. That is what Holland did for painting. ”

“ The business of Europe was transacted on the Amsterdam Exchange, and the warehouses of this town, built on piles driven into the swampy soil, were stored with the products of the world. In their cities the Dutch were carrying on those manufactures of the finest fabrics for which Flanders and Italy had once been famous, and piling up the spices of the Indies, of which for a time they possessed the monopoly. The wealth and the trade of the Dutch East India Company was more fruitful than the treasures which the kings of Spain had extorted from their conquests. ”

“ The houses become more distinct, their deep colour stands out strongly against the light blue of the sky; black, red, and green are the prevailing tones, and they lend strength, indeed almost violence, to the picture. What delight to the artist is this marvellous colouring of nature! In beholding such spectacles, we readily understand how it is that Holland has produced such great colourists. ”

“ Perhaps the most important factor in the wealth of the Netherlands at this early period was that it became in one town or another the sole market for English wool, and England in the early ages of Flemish industry was the only country from which this indispensable article could be supplied, at least in any quantity, and the only country also from which it was supplied of good quality. ”

“ I know no houses that so keep their secrets. In every one, I doubt not, is furniture worthy of the exterior: old paintings of Dutch gentlemen and gentlewomen, a landscape or two, a girl with a lute and a few tavern scenes; old silver windmills; and plate upon plate of serene blue Delft. (You may see what I mean in the Suasso rooms at the Stedelijk Museum.) I have walked and idled in the Keizersgracht at all times of the day, but have never seen any real signs of life. Mats have Page 155been banged on its doorsteps by clean Dutch maidservants armed with wicker beaters ”

“ Leather hangings are always present in wealthy homes of Holland. An excellent example is shown in the picture of The Young Scholar and his Sister by Coques (Cocx) , now in the Cassel Gallery. The room, which is richly furnished, is hung with blue and gold leather. ”

“ There is also another art which is in considerable vogue, and in which much good work has been done--that of wood-carving. In this the painter and illustrator Hoytema has shown considerable skill. Needless to say, Holland is also as famous now as ever for its pottery. Delft ware was ever the fame of the Dutch nation, though the Rosenbach and Gouda pottery is now gaining approval. It may be doubted, however, whether the love for the latter is altogether without affectation. One is inclined to believe that many of its admirers are enthusiastic to order. ”

“ His style is Oriental rather than Dutch, and his topics for the most part are mystical in character. He is famous also for his decorative art. This many-sided man is probably the greatest artist soul in Holland. He is expert in almost every domain of art. Etching, pastel and water-colour drawing, oil-painting, wood-cutting, lithography, working in silver, copper, and brass, and modelling in clay, belong equally to his accomplishments, though as a painter he is, of course, best known. ”

“ The people are never idle in Holland, but are always working at a great variety of manufactures, among which are leather, woollen, and linen articles,—also, paper, wax, starch, pottery, and tiles. Large quantities of gin are likewise made, and this liquor is in England called "Hollands" for that reason. Carts are not much used by the Dutch; their goods are carried on sledges, very light waggons, and boats. ”

“ HOLLAND.
"A country that draws fifty feet of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature,
And when the sea does in them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak."—Hudibras.
We know little of the early fabrics of this country. The laces of Holland, though made to a great extent, were overshadowed by the richer products of their Flemish neighbours. "The Netherlanders," writes Fynes Moryson, who visited Holland in 1589, "wear very little lace, [689] and no embroidery. Their gowns are mostly black, without lace or gards, and their neck-ruffs of very fine linen." ”

“ The Dutch go to an astonishing expense in their pipes, which assume an endless variety of shapes, and are decorated sometimes with the most coxcombical figures painted upon the head or cup of it, according to the taste of its possessor.
Many of the opulent Hollanders use a pipe, the head of which is made of a clay which is very rare, and found only in Turkey, of so beautiful a colour, that is called the Meerschaum, or froth of the sea; for this piece of luxury the value of eight and even ten guineas is frequently paid. ”

“ It is, however, well to observe, apropos of this gallery, that of late years Dutch art has made, under several aspects, honorable progress. The style which is preferred is still small landscapes, and in this there is no change; but painting scenes of private life has risen into higher regions. It has left the dregs of society for the middle classes, and come out of the taverns to dedicate itself lovingly to that sober, severe, and valorous people, the fishermen who labor and suffer in silence on the coast of Holland from Helder to the mouths of the Meuse ”

“ From the Far East they brought the suggestion of movable types. The bleached linens, the tapestries and woollen goods of Holland won fame throughout the world. The homes [Pg 61] of her burghers were models of comfort and even luxury. Small merchants of Amsterdam and Leyden and Rotterdam became merchant princes. Weavers and spinners of linen and silk, workers in iron, as well as silver and gold, left the other lands of Europe and settled in the Dutch seaports. ”

“ The Holland maiden or housewife can sit in her chamber with her knitting or sewing ― to be idle in Holland is deemed the blackest of sins ― without losing precious moments in looking out of the window. ”

“ English trade with Holland, doubtless very largely fostered by the Dutch proclivities of William III., had helped to disseminate a love for pottery and lacquer work of the East; artificial works were multiplying, and the middle classes, above all, wanted for the furnishing of their rapidly rising, substantial dwellings something more sumptuous than the humble simplicity of the common Jacobean—something which would have a taste, at least, of the luxurious extravagances of the French reigning style. ”

“ In the chapter on Jacobean furniture, we shall see the influence and assistance which England derived from Flemish woodworkers; and the similarity of the treatment in both countries will be noticed in some of the South Kensington Museum specimens of English marqueterie, made at the end of the seventeenth century. The figure work in Holland has always been of a high order, and though as the seventeenth century advanced, this perhaps became less refined, the proportions have always been well preserved, and the attitudes are free and unconstrained. ”

“ Such a set of porcelain as the good lady required to decorate the top and fill the shelves within, cost at that time as much as 300 double ducats (equal to about £136) ; but the ladies of that period had desires for fine furniture, dress and fashion that their husbands were often unable to gratify.
The best china-ware was obtainable in Amsterdam only, and English travellers used to buy porcelain there, as they now go to Brussels or Mechlin for lace or Cashmere for shawls. As late as the reign of Charles II, Holland maintained her pre-eminence in this trade. ”