Amiot Arnaut, in 1392.

A curious freak of the Gothic period was the making of ivory statuettes
of the Virgin, which opened down the centre (like the Iron Maiden
of Nüremberg), and disclosed within a series of Scriptural scenes
sculptured on the back and on both sides. These images were called
Vierges Ouvrantes, and were decidedly more curious than beautiful.

In the British Museum is a specimen of northern work, a basket cut
out from the bone of a whale; it is Norse in workmanship, and there
is a Runic inscription about the border, which has been thus
translated:

"The whale's bones from the fishes' flood
I lifted on Fergen Hill:
He was dashed to death in his gambols
And aground he swam in the shallows."

Fergen Hill refers to an eminence near Durham.

[Illustration: CHESSMAN FROM LEWIS]

Some very ancient chessmen are preserved in the British Museum, in
particular a set called the Lewis Chessmen. They were discovered
in the last century, being laid bare by the pick axe of a labourer.
These chessmen have strange staring eyes; when the workman saw
them, he took them for gnomes who had come up out of the bowels
of the earth, to annoy him, and he rushed off in terror to report
what proved to be an important archæological discovery.