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 dyed woods; while the smallness of the scale puts at our disposal ivory, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell, materials which in larger works are naturally out of the question. Nothing, on the other hand, is more offensive to good taste than some of the overdone marqueterie of the French school of the last century, with its picture panels, and naturalesque figures, flowers, and foliage, straggling all over the surface, as if the article of furniture were merely a vehicle for the cleverness of the marqueterie cutter. Still worse is the modern work of the kind, whether English or foreign, of which so much that is hopelessly pretentious and vulgar is turned out nowadays, in which the aim of the designer seems to have been to cover the surface as thickly as he could with flowers and festoons of all conceivable colours, without any regard for the form of the thing 343