IT is interesting to note that the Grea Fire of London started the importa tion of foreign woods from across the Baltic, as great quantities were needed at once for the purpose of rebuilding. These sof woods aroused the invention of the cabinet makers, and were especially useful for inlaying so we find in addition to oak, that mahogany pear and lime woods were used in fine furniture it being lime-wood that Grinling Gibbon carved when working with Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect (seventeenth century).

During the early Georgian period the oak carvings were merely poor imitations of Elizabethan and Stuart designs. There seemed to have been no artist wood-carvers with originality, which may have been partly due to a lack of stimulus, as the fashion in the decoration of furniture turned toward inlaying.