llage carpentry are referred. Yet
notwithstanding the completeness of those works there are a few objects
which have so entirely passed into the range of household curios, and
their uses were so entirely apart from present-day furniture, that some
of them are specially noted in the following paragraphs, together with a
few other isolated antiques.

Dower Chests.

If there is one piece of furniture above another that is surrounded with
a halo of romance, surely it is the dower chest! We can picture the
incoming of the coffer in all the newness of hand polish, fresh from the
hands of the village carpenter or the retainer who had wrought the
gnarled old oak grown on the estate for a favourite daughter of his
lord--that chest which was to be packed full of fragrant linen, between
which was laid sweet lavender, and richly embroidered garments for the
bride, who, with her personal belongings stowed away therein, was to
pass from the parental home to her newly wedded and unknown life. There
are ancient chests full of historic memories, such as those in which the
wealth of monarchs has been stored, like that in Knaresborough Castle,
which, according to legend and some reference in old deeds, came over
with William the Conqueror. In the Castle Museum there is another chest
made for Queen Philippa in 1333--a veritable dower chest.

Some of the older chests have had loops for poles by which they could be
carried about; but such were more correctly treasure chests. The dower
chests usually remained in the home of the bride, and in time became her
receptacle for bedding and other household stores, the little tray or
corner box for jewels and trinkets being disused and eventually done
away with altogether. The evolution of the chest until it became a
cabinet or a chest of drawers is a story for the lover of old furniture
to tell, but the dower chest in its earlier forms is a curio rich in
legend and folklore. It may interest American readers to record that
many of the oldest specimens in the States were first used as packing
cases of unusual strength, gifts from the old folks at home, when
colonists in Jacobean days crossed the Atlantic. Curiously enough,
American craftsmen copied them and maintained the purity of the old
English style long after the makers of English dower chests had been
influenced by Dutch and French design and inlay.

Medicine Chests.

Some of the early English medicine chests, the foundation of which is