NO piece of oak furniture which has descended to us from our forefathers is so universally owned and used as the chest or coffer. In almost every sale of farm or cottage furniture in the less sophisticated country districts one or more of these are to be found. They vary from elaborately carved specimens, such as that of ' Esther Hobsonne ' in the Victoria and Albert Museum, to examples with plain stiles and panels, and perhaps a mere incised semi-circle pattern, or less than that, upon the upper rail. But, carved or not, they are as useful as they were in the first years that they were made. So it happens that in most instances a collection of old oak furniture is begun with the nucleus of an oak chest, because the housewife - whatever her opinion may be of its artistic merits - can find for it some definite employment. If, in addition, it awakes a pleasant memory of the manner in which it was acquired, if it was routed out half-ruined from some garret in an old manor-house, or from a stable where it had served the common purpose of a corn-bin - all this adds, by the mysterious workings of the association of ideas, to the pleasure of acquisition.

Simple as is the shape of the chest, there is much in the proportion and working out of details in a good example that is worthy of attention. The attractiveness of the genuine colour of old oak, so different from the dead blackish stain which is the imitator's convention, the relative merits of smooth or panelled lids, the beading of stiles, the great question of reticence of decoration - whether it is better that the stiles and rails be plain, and the panels carved, or the reverse; whether both framework and panelling may be floridly adorned; the advantages or disadvantages of inlay upon oak, - all these matters may be considered as well in the case of an oak-chest as in a cabinet; and while the latter is a comparative rarity, within a short radius from the centre of a small country town perhaps fifty chests of the seventeenth century, if not of earlier date, can be discovered.