Fig. 70. Album Cover.
Foot-stools. These are really small panelled boxes, unless made with supports or legs.
Benches. Simple benches are seldom decorated, but they are admirably adapted to it. Never carve the seats, unless they are made to fold up to protect them from the rain, in which case the under ornaments of choir-seats or misereres may be appropriately used. When the bench has a back it becomes a rude sofa or settee or settle (Anglo-Saxon setl, a seat). Properly speaking a settle is a long bench with a high back. This may be carved in panels. There was an old Saxon and early English double chair made to seat two, which is like a short settle.
Fig. 71. Hanging Box.
Hanging Boxes. These are boxes generally made with a back, which is the longest piece, and which goes above and below the receptacle part. They are useful for newspapers or letters. Every kind of carving is applicable to them, Fig. [71].
Key Boxes. These are small hanging cabinets. In every family there are many loose keys of trunks and furniture lying about loose, and hard to find when wanted. If there were a key box they would always be readily found. Make a box or frame, let us say eighteen inches in length by ten inches width, of four strips of deal or any wood. These strips may be half an inch in thickness by an inch in width. Nail or glue them together so as to form the four sides of a box. Then take one or two or three strips of thin planed board, and neatly nail them on to form a back to the shallow box. Now take a panel, which is to form the lid or door of the cabinet. It will be better to make a narrow frame of four strips, and set the panel in this, as a door, with hinges and lock. This is to be hung up on the wall. It will very much improve the whole if the interior and outside of the cabinet, or all the deal, be stained to match the door, which, as it is to be carved, should be of walnut or oak, or some better class of wood. Then get some small silver or plated-headed nails and drive them in rows in the cabinet. The keys are to be hung up on these.
Cabinets. These may be in the nature of upright boxes with doors, with three sides ornamented, the fourth being placed against the wall, or three-sided for a corner. The forms of cabinets are extremely varied, and the artist should pass much time in designing them. They are of all sizes, from great armoires for clothing down to caskets. The word cabinet is derived from the French cabane, a cabin. The earliest dwellers in Italy made the receptacles for the ashes of the dead exactly like the cabins in which they dwelt.