In the Carlovingian period, 8th to 10th centuries, ivory was largely used for coffers or small chests. During the early Gothic period in Italy and France, ivory crucifixes, pastoral staffs, croziers, statuettes and triptychs were made in large numbers; and the ivory combs and mirror cases of the Renascence period have fine reliefs of legendary or allegorical subjects. Of pictorial ivories the modern Japanese craftsmen show the highest technical skill, combined with a keen perception of nature and movement, yet their ivories lack the beauty and dignity of composition and the decorative treatment of the early and Mediæval ivories. [Illustration: MOSAICS. Plate 26. ] MOSAICS. The durability, range of colour, and appropriateness of material and treatment to architectural conditions, has placed the art of Mosaic as the chief decorative enrichment of architecture. Its antiquity is unquestionable, for in the Book of Esther, i, 6, we read “of a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble.” Mosaic is the art of forming patterns by means of pieces of variously-coloured materials, fitted together, and is broadly divided into three classes: (1) OPUS TESSELATUM, or clay mosaic; (2) OPUS LITHOSTRATUM, or stone mosaic; (3) OPUS MISERUM, or glass mosaic. These divisions are again sub-divided into: (1) _Opus Figlinum_, or ceramic mosaic, formed of a vitreous composition and coloured with metallic oxides; (2) _Opus Signinum_, small pieces of tile; (3) _Opus Vermiculatum_, sub-divided into (a) _Majus_, black and white marble, (b) _Medium_, in which all materials and colours were used, and (c) _Minus_, of minute tesseræ, principally used for furniture inlay; (4) _Opus Sculpturatum_, slabs of marble hollowed out and filled in with grey or black marble; (5) _Opus Alexandrinum_, inlay of porphyry and serpentine; and (6) _Opus Sectile_, formed of different laminæ or slices of marble of various colours. It was in Rome that the art of Mosaic was brought to its greatest perfection, during the 1st and 2nd centuries, A.D., and many splendid examples of this period are now in the museums of the Vatican and at Naples. The finest example came from the House of the Faun, Pompeii, and represents the battle of Issus, between Alexander and Darius. This mosaic, of the 3rd century B.C., is probably a copy of a Greek painting. Many fine Roman mosaics have been found in England at Cirencester, London, Lincoln (fig. 6), Leicester, and at Brading in the Isle of Wight.