In regard to clock-cases, it is mostly found that the veneer has been laid upon an oak body. Usually the main surface is of walnut, into which the design has been inlaid by the use of other woods of suitable colours. At first the marquetry was in reserves or panels, as though the worker were warily picking his way and timidly mastering the technique. At this period clock-cases were, on account of the small space to be inlaid, very fit subjects for experiment. Doubtless some of the more ambitious work of the early years of this half-century (1670-1720) was actually produced by Dutch and also by French workmen settled in this country, and doubtless the clock-cases were largely imported. In either instance this would account for the early adoption of small articles such as clock-cases, after which followed chairs and tables, and finally larger pieces of furniture such as bureaus, when the cabinet-maker was master of the new art of laying veneer and marquetry, or when the public taste had advanced sufficiently to induce him to embark on more elaborate work. It is not easy to lay down any exact rules as to the priority of certain styles of marquetry. Many of them overlap in regard to date. It all depends on the point of view. Huguenot craftsmen or Dutch marquetry-workers could, and possibly did, make in London many such an example as the fine case with panels (illustrated p. 75) containing the movement by James Leicester, in date 1710, or the other example, in date about 1690 (illustrated p. 237), with the movement by Joseph Knibb, of Oxford, placed in the chapter on provincial makers as a glorious tribute to those great makers who worked outside the metropolis. In this earlier case of the Knibb clock it will be seen that there are only two panels, and they exhibit, in comparison with the James Leicester clock, a finer sense of proportion in relation to the surface to be decorated. It may not unreasonably be advanced, where the nicety of balance is well sustained, that the maker set out to make a clock-case with the dimensions fully before him as a marquetry-worker and not merely as a mechanical layer of imported panels. There is the suggestion in cut panels that they were not thought out in accord with the English clock-case, with its hole showing the pendulum.