It is said that about 1670 Evelyn found Grinling Gibbons in a small thatched house on the outskirts of Deptford, and introduced him to the King, who gave him an appointment on the Board of Works, and patronised him with extensive orders.  The character of his carving is well known; generally using lime-tree as the vehicle of his designs, the life-like birds and flowers, the groups of fruit, and heads of cherubs, are easily recognised.  One of the rooms in Windsor Castle is decorated with the work of his chisel, which can also be seen in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace, Chatsworth, Burleigh, and perhaps his best, at Petworth House, in Sussex.  He also sculptured in stone.  The base of King Charles’ statue at Windsor, the font of St. James’, Piccadilly (round the base of which are figures of Adam and Eve), are his work, as is also the lime-tree border of festoon work over the communion table.  Gibbons was an Englishman, but appears to have spent his boyhood in Holland, where he was christened “Grinling.”  He died in 1721.  His pupils were Samuel Watson, a Derbyshire man, who did much of the carved work at Chatsworth, Drevot of Brussels, and Lawreans of Mechlin.  Gibbons and his pupils founded a school of carving in England which has been continued by tradition to the present day.

[Illustration:  Silver Furniture at Knole. (From a Photo by Mr. Corke, of Sevenoaks.)]

A somewhat important immigration of French workmen occurred about this time owing to the persecutions of Protestants in France, which followed, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, by Louis XIV., and these refugees bringing with them their skill, their patterns and ideas, influenced the carving of our frames and the designs of some of our furniture.  This influence is to be traced in some of the contents of Hampton Court Palace, particularly in the carved and gilt centre tables and the torcheres of French design but of English workmanship.  It is said that no less than 50,000 families left France, some thousands of whom belonged to the industrial classes, and settled in England and Germany, where their descendants still remain.  They introduced the manufacture of crystal chandeliers, and founded our Spitalfields silk industry and other trades, till then little practised in England.

The beautiful silver furniture at Knole belongs to this time, having been made for one of the Earls of Dorset, in the reign of James II.  The illustration is from a photograph taken by Mr. Corke, of Sevenoaks.  Electrotypes of the originals are in the South Kensington Museum.  From two other suites at Knole, consisting of a looking glass, a table, and a pair of torcheres, in the one case of plain walnut wood, and in the other of ebony with silver mountings, it would appear that a toilet suite of furniture of the time of James II. generally consisted of articles of a similar character, more or less costly, according to circumstances.  The silver table bears the English Hall mark of the reign.