Dutch and Flemish Furniture
Wecker, a physician of Colmar, in his treatise De
Secretis (Bale, 1582), says: " One must not despise
the make of these tables that I have often seen in
Ghent in Flanders."
The tables designed by De Vries and reproduced in
Figs. 20, 21 and 22, are a great advance on the one that
appears in his Cubiculum. (Plate X.) The form is
much the same as those in Figs. 20 and 21, but the linen-
fold has given way to panels and pilasters of pure Renais-
sance character and the corner supports of sphinxes
and animals and vases have no memory of the Gothic
age. Fig. 22 shows us a table of an entirely different
character. It is much lighter and has drawers. With
its foot-rails it is well adapted for a dining-table.
A much more ornate specimen of this period called
a " fan-shaped table," (" table a I'eventail ") is owned
by the Dijon Museum. It is of Burgundian workman-
ship. The support, which still shows traces of gilding,
is formed of an eagle with outspread wings standing
between two winged chimaera with lions' paws, these
paws connected with a straining-rail, or stretcher. The
open-work shelf is ornamented with leaves and a mas-
caron, and the two upper and lower straining rails are
ornamented with a very clearly defined and handsome
decoration. The top of the table is surrounded by a
thread of marquetry.
Folding-tables were also in use; in Margaret of
Austria's inventory, mention is made of " a little table
in the Spanish fashion which opens and closes."
Chairs are still heavy and carved more or less richly.
Two typical specimens appear in Plate XII. As shown
112