'The Feathers' inn at Ludlow, originally a private house, has a front with overhanging stories, upon the timbering of which is carved the interlaced or connected circle pattern so common on beds and cabinets and chests. The equally common S-curve is there too, while in the gables appears the planted arch in pairs, exactly the same in general design as it appears on Elizabethan furniture, from the 'Great Bed of Ware' downwards. In what is now the coffee-room we find it on each side of a chimney-piece of oak, with the cypher of James I. above it.

Returning to stone houses, the semicircular or fan-shape, which I shall have occasion to describe as frequently occurring upon chairs with solid backs, is to be found in great size and perfection at Burford Priory, Oxfordshire. This Jacobean, or rather Carolean, house was chiefly built by the famous Speaker of the House of Commons, Lenthall, to whom the place was sold in 1634. The fan-shape appears over the bay above the porch. At Lower Walterstone, in Dorsetshire, an earlier house, built 1586, the fans occur over many of the windows. At Wroxton Abbey, Oxfordshire, built in 1618, there are four of these semicircles or fans over the porch. From 1586 to 1634, a period of nearly half a century, does this style of ornament appear to have been in demand, and within that period, if not later still, may we expect to find the chair with the top of its back so finished off. At the end of the seventeenth century the fan, or semicircle, changes into a shell upon chair tops, and a shell-shaped half dome, or cove, over porches and the tops of corner cupboards, or 'beaufaits,' as they were then called, with shelves for the display of plate and china. The shell is attributed to the Dutch influence of William III.'s reign.

Plate LXXXIX. Corner Cupboard, Mahogany, Pre-Chippendale Early 18th Century

LXXXIX. Corner Cupboard, mahogany. Pre-Chip-pendale. Early eighteenth century. This has a carved interior ceiling. Messrs. Gill and Reigate.

Whether this be so or not, it lasted long after him, and upon chairs in the early Chippendale style this often recurring shell is carved.

It is a question whether this fan or scallop-shell pattern is not one and the same thing (much used because it was easy to carve, and repaid the workman well by its strong effect of light and shade) with the frequently found scallop-shell over niches to hold sculpture, such as that of Sansovino in Italy.

The S-curve, whose uses in furniture a specimen plate1 shows to be numerous, appears - with the C-curve of later popularity - on the cresting of the towers of Hardwick Hall, 1590, and to more beautiful effect upon the top of the entrance front of Burton Agnes, a lovely brick house, exceptional in that respect in Yorkshire, and containing a famous oak screen with figures and much elaborate panelling.

Turning to a shape much in demand for long bor-derings, we find on the lintels over the windows of Apethorpe, Northamptonshire, built in 1623, a pattern which may be described as of short upright flutings with rounded tops. The lower part of the concave flutes is filled by a convex shape of similar outline. Now this and similar patterns are extremely common upon the framework which supports the flat tops of tables of the period, those long, narrow, and heavy carving tables with turned legs which we shall have presently to consider.

The pattern is found in a very large size upon the celebrated monument to one of the Griffin family in Braybrook Church, Northamptonshire. A third place, again, is the magnificent ruin of Kirby Hall. On a string course of the west front of this beautiful place, 1572-1575, the pattern is used, but here there is a lance or dart shape added. This pattern has some similarity to the egg and spoon and dart bordering so common on chimney-pieces and over doors, but is too flat to be correctly described by that familiar name. On Northamptonshire houses the shape seems to have been popular, and I should expect to find it frequently upon Northamptonshire tables. But the pattern is indeed widespread and long-lasting. It is to be found upon the Italian cassoni or chests, and it is part of the commonest stock-in-trade of the eighteenth-century style of Adam.

1 VIII.