these remote times. They represent chiefly the seats of state used by
sovereigns on the occasions of grand banquets, or of some ecclesiastical
function, and from the valuable collections of these documents in the
National Libraries of Paris and Brussels, some illustrations are
reproduced, and it is evident from such authorities that the designs of
State furniture in France and other countries dominated by the
Carlovingian monarchs were of Byzantine character, that pseudo-classic
style which was the prototype of furniture of about a thousand years
later, when the Cæsarism of Napoleon I., during the early years of the
nineteenth century, produced so many designs which we now recognise as
"Empire."

No history of mediaeval woodwork would be complete without noticing the
Scandinavian furniture and ornamental wood carving of the tenth to the
fifteenth centuries. There are in the South Kensington Museum, plaster
casts of some three or four carved doorways of Norwegian workmanship, of
the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, in which scrolls are entwined
with contorted monsters, or, to quote Mr. Lovett's description, "dragons
of hideous aspect and serpents of more than usually tortuous
proclivities." The woodcut of a carved lintel conveys a fair idea of this
work, and also of the old Juniper wood tankards of a much later time.

[Illustration: A Carved Norwegian Doorway. Period: X. to XI. Century.]

There are also at Kensington other casts of curious Scandinavian woodwork
of more Byzantine treatment, the originals of which are in the Museums of
Stockholm and Copenhagen, where the collection of antique woodwork of
native production is very large and interesting, and proves how wood
carving, as an industrial art, has flourished in Scandinavia from the
early Viking times. One can still see in the old churches of Borgund and