layette, a small coffer, was used by ladies for holding their jewels and articles of toilet, but the bahut was the large chest which usually had an oval top like a modern trunk and held the plate, linen, and wearing apparel which the bride brought to her husband's house. As may be imagined, these marriage chests were decorated with subjects appropriate to their use. In the sixteenth-century French example illustrated, the front panels are carved with figures representing Cupid with his bow and arrow and Hymen with his torch. The cover is decorated by applied wood ornaments in colour, and bears the inscription "Mitte Arcana Dei." This coffer stands upon richly carved feet. The boldly carved caryatides follow architectural motifs, and the form resembles that of the sarcophagus, noticeable in the Italian marriage chests. South German bride chests are usually decorated lavishly with coloured marquetry, though early forms eschew this style of ornament and are richly carved with gothic design. At Augsburg and Nuremberg ebony and silver work was greatly practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was esteemed so highly that it was imported by other countries. Old Swiss chests may be studied with advantage as indicating the various art influences which have affected the successive styles. A rich collection can be seen at the Landesmuseum, Zurich. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century examples are based on German types; in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century Italian styles predominate; later, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, French characteristics are noticeably present. The peasant types, as distinct from fine specimens executed by trained craftsmen, are frequently made of deal and pine. But the finer wrought chests are of walnut. Swiss chests are a revelation as to construction, and exhibit a greater inventiveness at an earlier date than do the chests made in England. Examples of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century have two and sometimes three drawers under the chest, a style that did not become general in this country until nearly a century later. A fine chest of the late sixteenth century inlaid with marquetry is at St. Saviour's Church, Southwark. The drawers are in the lower portion of the chest, which had developed from legs, or at most a stand, into a structure half as large as the superimposed chest. This double form naturally suggested to the designer to use this further space for storage. Hence the origin of drawers. In the example illustrated of a fifteenth-century French chest, although the dimensions are small, the proportions show the transitional stage before the introduction of drawers. In Holland the chest was spacious, and made of oak, walnut, sacerdaan, lignum vitæ or some other rich wood imported from the Dutch East Indies. The kas was the receptacle of the store of household linen so beloved of the Dutch housewife. This form was really a tall chest, but later it became the great kasten, of huge dimensions, mounted on great wooden balls, a well-known feature of interiors depicted by old Dutch masters. In its simpler form of a box with a lid, the chest is early found in Holland amplified with a high wooden back and arms-in other words the settle. The Chest and its Developments.-The evolution of the chest, when man's necessities were more circumscribed than they are now, by various well-defined stages into the modern buffet or sideboard on the one hand, and the elaborate wardrobe on the other, is of exceptional interest. Old chests are to be found in halls of modern houses, but their former use has departed. When found in churches and muniment rooms they are still in use as a repository for parish records, which it were more wise, if these have any value at all, to protect from fire by the modern safe. When the early craftsman looked at his box and saw its limitations he conceived the idea of raising it from the ground by means of feet, and of making it open not at the top out at the sides. Take the fifteenth-century Bavarian coffer (illustrated p. 53), having feet to protect it in its damp resting-place, possibly in some cellar; the adjacent illustration shows how easy was the transition to the hutch or livery cupboard. Similarly the designer who first added a wooden back to the chest builded greater than he knew. He laid the foundation for much that has followed. The oak chest with back and with added arms was the prototype of the seventeenth-century Jacobean settle and the modern settee. In more grandiose form the chest grew into the credence and the buffet. It became more involved as time went on and as the home became more permanent. Other craftsmen added drawers when the chest was raised from the ground. It remained a chest when it was constructed with other boxes within it, to draw out, and in this form we keep the name "a chest of drawers." In Holland the chest on legs became a wonderful cabinet. In Spain it still retained its box-like form, although on an elaborate stand. Its dropdown front or its open doors display rows of compartments and drawers. Coloured bone and metal were used as marquetry. The body of the chest was usually of chestnut. Birds, animals, trees, and chimerical monsters were fashioned in marquetry, and sometimes Hispano-Moresque geometric designs were embodied. In Portugal metal plates pierced with elaborate ornament or chased by the engraver were fastened on the surface by means of pins. The French commodes and bureaux are after all only magnificent chests standing on cabriole legs fashioned with all the artistry of the ébéniste, encrusted with metal mountings and glittering with tortoiseshell inlays. In Germany a particular kind of armoire or |