Two dressing-tables from engravings of the day are shown in Nos. 1 and 3, Plate XXIII. No. 1. is properly draped with the toilet, usually muslin, but often of richer material. On the same plate, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, are details both of simple and more ornate mirrors of this style. No. 5 is especially good with its carvings, gildings and inlaid leaf ornamentation. The glasses in the mirrors were gradually increasing in size as the manufacturers became more skillful. Nos. 2 and 3, Plate XIX., show two oval mirrors of different proportions. No. 3 is a specially fine example, as it shows so many of the contemporary decorative motives, including the mascaron, shell, _chute_, swag, scroll and wings. The handles for cabinets, chests-of-drawers, etc., were of various shapes, but the brass drop-handle was the most usual. Its length for average drawers was two inches. The ordinary model is reproduced in No. 6, Plate XXIII. The tables still retained the late Jacobean characteristics shown in No. 8, Plate XXIII. Far more common, however, were the so-called “thousand-legged” tables with round or square leaves and horse legs. The legs were becoming slimmer and still connected with the centre frame by stretchers close to the ground. The display of china had developed a new piece of furniture. Dyche thus defines it in 1748: “Buffet, a handsome open cupboard or repository for plate, glasses, china, etc., which are put there either for ornament or convenience of serving the table,” and Chambers, 1751: “Beaufait, Buffet, or Bufet, was anciently a little apartment separated from the rest of the room by slender wooden columns, for the disposing china and glassware, etc., also called a _cabinet_. It is now, properly, a large table in a dining-room, called also a sideboard, for the plate, glasses, bottles, basons, etc., to be placed, as well for the service of the table as for magnificence. The buffet, among the Italians, called _credenza_, within a balustrade, elbow-high.” Sometimes the “beaufait” consisted of a tier of shelves built into a niche in the wall of the dining-room. Even in the Queen Anne period, however, the word was sometimes used to signify a table. Murray quotes (1718): “The plate was placed upon a table or buffett.” The word in the sense of sideboard as we know it to-day came from France. In 1710 D’Aviler says: “Bufet; in a vestibule or a dining-room, a large table with stages in the style of a credence upon which are displayed the vases, the basins, and the cristal as much for the service at the table as for magnificence. This Bufet, which the Italians calls credence, is with them usually placed in the great _salon_ and closed in by a balustrade breast high. Those belonging to princes and cardinals stand under a daïs of cloth.” THE EARLY GEORGIAN PERIOD [Illustration: PLATE XXIV] [Illustration] THE EARLY GEORGIAN PERIOD