he
cabinets are often of the most elaborate architectural design, like the
facade of a palace, made of ebony, or occasionally even of ivory, and
inlaid with ivory, silver, gold and enamels or precious stones.
Augsburg was the most celebrated place for such work. The joiner, the
woodcarver, the lapidary, and the goldsmith all worked together on such
things. In the North of Germany tarsia was principally used on chests,
cabinets, seats, and smaller objects of furniture; in South Germany,
where the Italian influence was stronger, it was much used in
wall-panelling and the panels of doors. The little castle of Voelthurn,
near Brixen, built by the bishop of that town in 1580-85 and decorated
by Brixener artists and joiners (now belonging to Prince Lichtenstein),
shows "panelled walls with architectural features, columns, cornices,
and friezes, with gabled doorways with columns and pediments, decorated
with very delicate intarsias, foliage ornaments, flowers, and fruit, a
work which modern Brixener joiners could with difficulty understand"; so
says Von Falke. Ebony and ivory work came to Germany in the latter half
of the 16th century, when Augsburg and Nuremberg soon exported their
productions of this sort to all the world, and with this commercial
production the use of male and female designs begins, black on white and
white on black. The latter is the better and more valued. Hans
Schieferstein's cabinet, now at Dresden, a work of this period, has an
ingenious use of this mode of inlay. It is made of ebony or veneered
with that wood, and has inlays of brown cypress and of ivory. The
panel on the inside of the door is of the same design as that on the
outside, but what was white becomes brown, what was brown is black, and
the black becomes white.

[Illustration: Plate 42.--_Lower panel of door, 1564--Tyrolese._

_To face page 90._]

In the Musee Cluny is a wire drawing bench made in 1565 for Augustus I.,
Elector of Saxony, who was an amateur craftsman. The two longitudinal
surfaces are covered with a double frieze of marquetry, one side
representing a satirical tournament between the Papacy and Lutheranism,
and the other a carousal of wild men. In front one sees the marqueteur
with his tools doing his work, below which he has placed his monogram,
L--D., accompanied by a cup.

In the Museum at Leipzig is a very fine cabinet, with many drawers
within, elaborately inlaid with arabesques on a light ground, with a few
archite