This transition from Mediaeval and Gothic, to Renaissance, is clearly noticeable in the woodwork of many cathedrals and churches in England and in continental cities. It is evident that the chairs, stalls, and pulpits in many of these buildings have been executed at different times, and the change from one style to another is more or less marked. The Flemish buffet here illustrated is an example of this transition, and may be contrasted with the French Gothic buffet referred to in the following paragraph. There is also in the central hall of the South Kensington Museum a plaster cast of a carved wood altar stall in the Abbey of Saint Denis, France: the pilasters at the sides have the familiar Gothic pinnacles, while the panels are ornamented with arabesques, scrolls, and an interior in the Renaissance style; the date of this is late in the fifteenth century. The buffet on page 43 is an excellent specimen of the best fifteenth century French Gothic oak work, and the woodcut shows the arrangement of gold and silver plate on the white linen cloth with embroidered ends, in use at this time. [Illustration: Carved Oak Table. Period: Late XV. or Early XVI. Century. French.] [Illustration: Flemish Buffet. Of Carved Oak; open below with panelled cupboards above. The back evidently of later work, after the Renaissance had set in. (_From a Photo, by Messrs. R. Sutton & Co. from the Original in the S. Kensington Museum._) Period: Gothic To Renaissance, XV. Century.] [Illustration: A Tapestried Room in a French Chateau, With Oak Chests as Seats.] [Illustration: Carved Oak Seat, With moveable Backrest, in front of Fireplace. Period: Late XV. Century. French.] We have now arrived at a period in the history of furniture which is confused, and difficult to arrange and classify. From the end of the fourteenth century to the Renaissance is a time of transition, and specimens may be easily mistaken as being of an earlier or later date than they really are. M. Jacquemart notices this "gap," though he fixes its duration from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and he quotes as an instance of the indecision which characterised this interval, that workers in furniture were described in different terms; the words coffer maker, carpenter, and huchier (trunk-maker) frequently occurring to describe the same class of artisan. It is only later that the word "menuisier," or joiner, appears, and we must enter upon the period of the Renaissance before we find the term "cabinet maker," and later still, after the end of the seventeenth century, we have such masters of their craft as Riesener described as "ebenistes," the word being derived from ebony, which, with other eastern woods, came into use after the Dutch settlement in Ceylon. Jacquemart also notices the fact that as early as 1360 we have record of a specialist, "Jehan Petrot," as a "chessboard maker."