sed to make an altar. In the Museum at South
Kensington are some panels with Hispano-Moresque geometric inlays of
bone of the 15th century, which are very pleasing; the ground is of
chestnut, the bone is often stained green, and metal triangles and
light wood are also used. This use of bone, which is frequently tinted,
in conjunction with black and pale wood, is characteristic of Spanish
work of the 16th century. The design is often exceedingly naive,
employing birds, animals, plants, and trees, with scrolls and monsters.
There is one cabinet at South Kensington with the animals entering the
ark, which is most entertaining. The Portuguese carried this work on
later, especially at Goa, in the 17th century, but neither here nor in
Spain is the later work tasteful, except occasionally. Cabinets were
then made at Toledo of ebony and ivory, and at Seville and Salamanca the
same materials were used for chests and sideboards.

At Burgos is a pulpit decorated with inlay as well as carving, and one
of the most elaborate works of marquetry of comparatively modern times
is Spanish. This consists of the decoration of four small rooms in the
Escurial, upon which 28,000,000 reals (L300,000) was spent in 1831. They
are called "piezas de maderas finas," rooms of perfect or delicate
woods, and are entirely covered with landscapes, still-life subjects,
flowers, etc., made of the finest and most costly woods, and almost like
paintings; floor, frieze, panels, window recesses, and doors.

There was a mode of decorating furniture much used in Spain and
Portugal, especially the latter, in which metal plates, cut and pierced
into elaborate and fanciful patterns, were fastened on to the surface of
objects made of black wood by means of small pins. From this to the
decoration of the same surfaces by sinking the metal in the wood is a
short step, and some think that this was the origin of the metal inlay
so well known a little later under the name of Boulle work.

IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND, ENGLAND AND FRANCE

[Illustration: Plate 38.--_Panel from the Rathaus, Breslau, 1563._

_To face page 84._]

In Germany there can be little doubt that the art first struck root in
the southern part of the country, the towns which produced the earliest
furniture and other objects decorated in this manner being Augsburg and
Nuremberg. The first names of workers recorded, however, are those of
the two brothers Elfen, monks of S. Michael at Hildesheim, w