84 OF WOOD IN GENERAL 



there known as " Alerce," The true Cypress {Oupressus semper- 

 mrens) was, no doubt, largely used, not only, as is related, for 

 Alexander the Great's Babylonian fleet or Semiramis' bridge over 

 the Euphrates, but owing to its durability and resistance to moth, 

 for clothes-chests. An Italian chest of tliis wood of the fourteenth 

 oentury is preserved at South Kensington, and John of Gaunt 

 bequeaths one in his will in 1397. The Certosina work, or inlay- 

 ing of this wood and wahiut with ivory, so caUed from the choir 

 fittings of the Certosa between Milan and Pavia, an art practised 

 at Florence in the fifteenth century, was perhaps brought by the 

 Venetians from Persia, from which country it also reached Bom- 

 bay, Sissoo {Dalhergia Sissoo), possibly the Chittim of Holy Scrip- 

 ture, and other species of Rosewood, Ebony, Teak, and Walnut, 

 may have reached Assyria, Syria, and even more western lands 

 from India ; but the Corsican Ebony used by the Romans for veneers 

 was probably the Laburnum, the *' Faux Ebenier " of the French. 

 Lotos-wood, said to have been used in Greek sculpture, may have 

 been that of the Nettle-tree {Celtis austrdlis), stiU. much used in 

 Southern Europe. We read of the Romans using Box and Beech 

 for chairs and for veneers ; Beech for chests ; Ohve, both wild and 

 cultivated, for veneers ; Eig, Willow, Plane, Elm, Mulberry, Cherry, 

 a,nd Cork-Oak, as ground for veneers ; Maple, especially Bird's-eye 

 Maple (probably Acer camp^tre), for tables ; and Syrian Terebinth 

 (Pistdcia Terebinthus), and Poplar for various other purposes. 

 Though Norway Pine was imported by Henry III., in the thirteenth 

 century, for panelling at Windsor, throughout the Middle Ages, Oak 

 was the main furniture wood as it was the chief building material. 

 As in the timber-frame houses of the Chester rows, the fourteenth- 

 century roof of Westminster Hall, or the marvellously carved one of 

 the PaLs de Justice at Rouen in the sixteenth ; so I the great bed 

 of Ware and other EngHsh and Flemish furniture during the Tudor 

 period, Oak alone is employed. It was used as a bed wood for 

 veneering by Boule under Louis XIV,, and was painted white and 

 gilt in the time of Louis XVL Italian Walnut {Jliglans rigia) was 

 much used in Italy for carving and gilding from the fifteenth century, 

 and it was at Venice and Florence that the use of the soft white 

 woods of Willow, Linden, and Sycamore for carved and gilt frames 

 for mirrors originated in the sixteenth. A beautiful cabinet of 

 EngHsh sixteenth-century workmanship in the Victoria and Albert 

 Museum is adorned with high-relief carvings in Pearwood ; and a 

 South German one in the same museum of seventeenth-century date 

 is of Pine and Oak veneered with Hungarian Ash and Walnut. 

 The use of Ebony, especially for inlaying Walnut wardrobes, became 

 more general after the Dutch settlement in Ceylon in 1695 ; Grinling 



