the legs are the letters R.W., G.I., J.R., and W.W., being the initials of Richard Wyatt, George Isack, John Reeve, and William Willson, who were Master and Wardens of the Company in 1606, which date is carved in two of the spandrils.  While the ornamental legs shew some of the characteristics of Elizabethan work, the treatment is less bold, the large acorn-shaped member has become more refined and attenuated, and the ornament is altogether more subdued.  This is a remarkable specimen of early Jacobean furniture, and is the only one of the shape and kind known to the writer; it is in excellent preservation, save that the top is split, and it shews signs of having been made with considerable skill and care.

[Illustration:  Carved Oak Chair.  From Abingdon Park.

Carved Oak Chair.  In the Carpenters’ Hall

From Photos in the S. Kensington Museum Album. Early XVII.  Century.  English.]

The Science and Art Department keep for reference an album containing photographs, not only of many of the specimens in the different museums under its control, but also of some of those which have been lent for a temporary exhibition.  The illustration of the above two chairs is taken from this source, the album having been placed at the writer’s disposal by the courtesy of Mr. Jones, of the Photograph Department.  The left-hand chair, from Abingdon Park, is said to have belonged to Lady Barnard, Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, and the other may still be seen in the Hall of the Carpenters’ Company.

[Illustration:  Oak Chimney Piece.  Removed from an old house in Lime Street, City. (South Kensington Museum.) Period:  James I.]

In the Hall of the Barbers’ Company in Monkswell Street, the Court room, which is lighted with an octagonal cupola, was designed by Inigo Jones as a Theatre of Anatomy, when the Barbers and Surgeons were one corporation.  There are some three or four tallies of this period in the Hall, having four legs connected by stretchers, quite plain; the moulded edges of the table tops are also without enrichment.  These plain oak slabs, and also the stretchers, have been renewed, but in exactly the same style as the original work; the legs, however, are the old ones, and are simple columns with plain turned capitals and bases.  Other tables of this period are to be found in a few old country mansions; there is one in Longleat, which, the writer has been told, has a small drawer at the end, to hold the copper coins with which the retainers of the Marquis of Bath’s ancestors used to play a game of shovel penny.  In the Chapter House in Westminster Abbey, there is also one of these plain substantial James I. tables, which is singular in being nearly double the width of those which were made at this time.  As the Chapter House was, until comparatively recent years, used as a room for the storage of records, this table was probably made, not as a dining table, but for some other purpose requiring greater width.