Holland had made a significant contribution to the development of English handmade furniture in the last years of the 17th century, and in the first half of the 18th century this was reciprocated to such an extent that there is a substantial group of furniture, most of it veneered with burr walnut, that is conveniently described as 'Anglo Dutch'.
The influence of the French Regence style was also marked, especially on armchairs, and many Dutch examples combine the cartouche-shaped, padded back of the French type with cabriole legs having the typically English convex bulge at the junction with the seat rail. Quite often, these legs are joined by shaped stretchers in the Regence manner. This kind of stretcher also appears on chairs with English style claw-and-ball feet and vase-shaped splats in the backs, but decorated in an uncompromisingly Dutch way with floral marquetry.
By around 1750, the Rococo style was well established in the Netherlands. In the south, fine oak armoires were made at Liege, their doors and cornices carved with formal cartouches relieved by delicate, asymmetrically arranged, leafy tendrils and shells. In the north, walnut-veneered commodes of bombe shape with marquetry decoration were produced in the Louis XV manner, usually with wooden rather than marble tops.
The swell of the Dutch bombe form is often low in the belly of the carcase. Another piece, the 'tallboy' or 'highboy', evolved from the bombe commode, using the shape of the latter as the base beneath a two-door clothes press, which was fitted inside with sliding trays and rose to a stepped cornice that provided ledges for Chinese or Delft vases.
While the general tendency was for French influence to increase in the mid 18th century, some tables and lowboys (side tables with several drawers) owe something to English designs of the period. In spite of these foreign fashions, the fitted and non fitted furniture of the Netherlands developed a strong national character which the guilds fought hard to preserve, which maintaining high standards of workmanship. Each large town had its own guild, and the records of some have been preserved, but as relatively few pieces were signed it is difficult to attribute pieces to particular makers.
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