Dutch and Flemish Furniture
of very high relief, gilded and painted, the designs con-
sisting of branches or large flowers in the style of the
textiles of Damascus and India. The South Kensington
Museum has a very fine collection of Spanish leathers
ornamented with foliage, flowers, vases, birds and pome-
granates. The colours of the background are green,
blue, white, gold, red, etc.
The Flemish leathers are very similar to those of
Cordova, but the relief is less pronounced and the designs
are more delicate. The hangings of Flanders are almost
exclusively made of calfskin, and they were highly
prized throughout Europe.
Generally speaking, the earliest specimens of gilded
leathers resemble on a large scale the miniatures in the
manuscripts : there is little or no perspective, and the
subjects are like those of the contemporary tapestry
drawn from sacred or mythological stories. The 'details
of the faces, ornaments, costumes, arms, etc., are stamped
by hand-work and finished with a brush; and the
background, instead of representing sky, is ornamented
by guilloches (twisted bands) in gold and colour, applied
by means of a goffering iron.
The Low Countries were almost as celebrated for
their orfevrerie as for their tapestries. Celebrated schools
of goldsmith's work existed in the Netherlands during
the tenth and eleventh centuries in Waulsort under the
direction of d'Erembert, in Stavelot and in Maestricht ;
and the diocese of Liege had an important atelier for
enamel-work in the twelfth century, A very skilful
goldsmith named Godefroid de Clerc worked in the
town of Huy in the first half of the thirteenth century,
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