IVORY CARVINGS 63 



something in this spirited production. A popular attribu- 

 tion to Michelangelo can at most be taken as a tribute to 

 the superior artistic qualities of the work. 



Besides the triptychs which were so much favoured, the 

 principal productions of the medieval artists in ivory were 

 boxes, usually for containing the relics of saints; panels 

 for the decoration of chairs, doors, walls, etc.; croziers; 

 tau-crosses, having the form of the Greek letter tau (T); 

 pectoral crosses; crucifixes — very rare; paxes, for receiving 

 the kiss of peace which was in earlier times exchanged 

 between the communicants directly after the Mass; fan- 

 handles; mirror frames; horns, both for hunting and drinking 

 (they were also occasionally used as reliquaries); seals; 

 chessmen; draughtsmen; cups and tankards, and portrait 

 medallions.* 



That ivory tablets were used well up to the end of medie- 

 val times in Europe comes out clearly in one of Chaucer's 

 Canterbury Tales where he describes the friar's assistant 

 as bearing about with him 



A pair of tables all of ivory 

 And a poyntal polish'd fetishly. 



These were for the registration of the gifts of those 

 whose perhaps too sluggish charitable impulses had been 

 struck by the alternate wheedling and bullying of the friar. 

 If, however, the givers had any hope of gaining credit for 

 their gifts, they were doomed to disappointment, for no 

 sooner were they out of sight than the sharp end of the 

 "poyntal" or stylet was exchanged for the blunt end, and 

 the names of the givers we're quickly rubbed off the surface 

 of the tablet. 



*See Dalton "Catalogue of the ivory carvings of the Christian era and carvings in bone 

 in the Dept. of British and Medieval Archaeology and Ethnography in the British Museum," 

 London, 1909, pp. 21, sqq. 



