The furniture of ordinary houses of this period was very simple. Chests, more or less carved, and ornamented with iron work, settles of oak or of chestnut, stools or benches with carved supports, a bedstead and a prie dieu chair, a table with plain slab supported on shaped standards, would nearly supply the inventory of the furniture of the chief room in a house of a well-to-do merchant in France until the fourteenth century had turned. The table was narrow, apparently not more than some 30 inches wide, and guests sat on one side only, the service taking place from the unoccupied side of the table. In palaces and baronial halls the servants with dishes were followed by musicians, as shewn in an old-miniature of the time, reproduced on p. 39. Turning to German work of the fifteenth century, there is a cast of the famous choir stalls in the Cathedral of Ulm, which are considered the finest work of the Swabian school of German wood carving. The magnificent panel of foliage on the front, the Gothic triple canopy with the busts of Isaiah, David, and Daniel, are thoroughly characteristic specimens of design; and the signature of the artist, Jorg Syrlin, with date 1468, are carved on the work. There were originally 89 choir stalls, and the work occupied the master from the date mentioned, 1468, until 1474. The illustrations of the two chairs of German Gothic furniture formerly in some of the old castles, are good examples of their time, and are from drawings made on the spot by Prof. Heideloff. [Illustration: Two German Chairs (Late 15th Century). (_From Drawings made in Old German Castles by Prof. Heideloff._)] There are in our South Kensington Museum some full-sized plaster casts of important specimens of woodwork of the fifteenth and two previous centuries, and being of authenticated dates, we can compare them with the work of the same countries after the Renaissance had been adopted and had completely altered design. Thus in Italy there was, until the latter part of the fifteenth century, a mixture of Byzantine and Gothic of which we can see a capital example in the casts of the celebrated Pulpit in the Baptistry of Pisa, the date of which is 1260. The pillars are supported by lions, which, instead of being introduced heraldically into the design, as would be the case some two hundred years later, are bearing the whole weight of the pillars and an enormous superstructure on the hollow of their backs in a most impossible manner. The spandril of each arch is filled with a saint in a grotesque position amongst Gothic foliage, and there is in many respects a marked contrast to the casts of examples of the Renaissance period which are in the Museum. [Illustration: Carved Oak Buffet in Gothic Style (Viollet le Duc). Period: XV. Century. French.]