When much elaborate carving was to be done, walnut was not the wood to use. Something softer and more easily cut was required. This Grinling Gibbons found in lime, which he used largely for mirror frames, and wherever his wonderfully relieved work, similar to that masterpiece over the altar in St. James's, Piccadilly, was required. Lime-tree in the flat is a light-coloured wood, not unlike satin-wood when polished, but perhaps even lighter in hue. It has not the sheen in the grain which renders the best satin-wood so attractive. Its grain, however, not being obvious, made it advantageous for carving such as that of Grinling Gibbons. In this respect and in colour it compares with box, though the two differ greatly in relative hardness. Both woods have been used for the most elaborate carvings ever made, each of their respective kind, on account of the absence of strong markings.

Cedar was used for expensive room panelling, as we learn from Evelyn's Diary, August 23, 1678. The Duke of Norfolk's new palace at Weybridge had rooms 'wainscotted, and some of them parquetted with cedar, yew, cypresse, etc' We come across the yew parquett-ing again at 'Cashioberie,' and at Warwick Castle, where he says the 'furniture is noble,' there exists a fine cedar panelled room. Cedar was, of course, extensively used for chests at an earlier period. Cedar in small pieces is a familiar wood, but yew, except to archers, is not so well known. It is a wood which varies in colour. Large parts of it are as light as lime, but it contains also streaks of a much darker colour, a light brown with perhaps a reddish tinge. It would be rare to find furniture of a large size made of yew, but at the Soane Museum there is a circular table of some five feet in diameter veneered with it. The uncommon Windsor chair in the Gothic style belonging to Mr. W. H. Bliss which we illustrate (Plate clx.) is of yew, and has a fine reddish tone which makes it very remarkable.

Plate CLX.

I - Windsor Chair, Yew, Gothic Style

2 - Chair, Wood, Painted Green 18th Century

CLX. (1) Windsor Chair, yew, Gothic style. Mr. W. H. Bliss.

(2) Chair, wood painted green. Eighteenth century. This is said to have belonged to Oliver Goldsmith, and to have been bequeathed by him, in 1774, to his physician, Dr. Hawes. V. & A. M.

Height 37¾.

There is a certain softness and suaveness about the grain of yew, when not too many knots and 'pin-holes' appear, which differentiates it from other woods.

We may very naturally expect to find English elm a good deal used for furniture. It has not any particular beauties of colour or grain to recommend it, and its durability is by no means that of oak. Made up into chests of drawers or tables, it is of a light colour with a noticeable straight grain, but not the additional handsome and sometimes shiny cross or 'silver' grain of oak. A cabriole leg Queen Anne dressing-table in the writer's possession is made of elm, and the little knee-hole ladies' writing-tables of the same date or thereabouts are sometimes found of this material.