We have noticed how plentiful the ivory carvings were of the fourteenth century period; but at the end of that century ivory sculpture fell in abeyance, which lasted during almost the whole of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This was due to the very great impulse given to wood carving by the French, and even more so by the German wood sculptors. Large wooden altar-pieces, or “retables,” came into fashion, and also minute wooden portraits and statuettes, which for a long period superseded ivory carvings; and in Germany a good deal of carving was executed in “Speckstein” or Soapstone, a kind of drab-coloured lithographic stone that was not difficult to work. Albert Dürer and Lucas Cranach carved some very fine works in Speckstein. At the beginning of the seventeenth century ivory carving became again in great request. The Germans carried the arts of ivory and miniature wood carving, as they did the larger style of wood carving, to great perfection; in fact to an astonishing degree of dexterity, that would compare with Chinese or Japanese carving, but lacking in the restrained artistic power of the latter nation’s productions. All kinds of astonishing creations are preserved in the museums of subjects such as little ivory carvings of skeletons in company with groups of female figures, miniature hunchbacks, and beggars with diamonds for buttons on their dresses. Leo Pronner, of Nuremberg, carved on a cherry-stone a hundred heads, that required the aid of a magnifying glass to see the expressions, and later Simon Troger, of the same city, produced many marvels in ivory figures with brown wood dresses and other accessories in wood. Many good ivories have been the work of Spanish carvers, and as a rule they are tinted or coloured. Nearly all the carvings in ivory that we have noticed have been statuettes, reliefs, or objects in which the human figure predominates. As a matter of fact there are very few ivories of any artistic value in which the human figure is not the most important part of the composition, purely ornamental work being very rare. Even in Saracenic work, where the figure and animal representations are not found, the amount of carved ivory work is limited, and the specimens are very scarce. [Illustration: Fig. 125.—Carved Ivory Panels of a Pulpit Door; Saracenic. (S.K.M.)] In an ancient Coptic church in Cairo there is a massive partition or screen of ebony, in which is a central door and two side panels. This screen has a rich display of inlaid ivory carved with arabesques, and has ivory crosses in high relief. The screen is believed by Mr. Butler—the author of “The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt”—to be a work of the tenth century, and also to be the model on which the ivory carving of the mosques was founded. The ivory carvings in Saracenic work are usually found as carved or chased panels, with arabesque designs, and surrounded with geometric linear framing (Fig. 125).