My first specimen is from a manuscript in the British Museum, written and illuminated in England in the middle of the fifteenth century. It is called Fais et Gestes du Roi Alexandre[532]. The picture ([fig. 141]) represents Alexander as a little child, standing in front of his tutor, who is seated in one of the chairs I described above. On the learned man's right is his book-desk. A circular table with a rim round it to prevent the books falling off, is supported on a central pedestal, which contains the screw. The top of the said screw is concealed by the little Gothic turret in the centre of the table. This turret also supports the book which the reader has in use.
Fig. 143. A lady seated in her chair reading. From a MS. written in France, early in the fifteenth century.
My next example is from a miniature in a volume of Hours known as the Dunois Horæ, also written in the middle of the fifteenth century. It has been slightly enlarged in order to bring out the details more clearly. The subject is S. Luke writing his Gospel, but the background represents a scholar's room. There is a bookcase of a very modern type, a table with two folio volumes lying upon it, and in the centre a hexagonal book-desk, with a little Gothic turret as in the last example. Round the screw under the table are four cylindrical supports, the use of which I fail to understand, but they occur frequently on desks of this type. The whole piece of furniture rests on a heavy cylindrical base, and that again on a square platform.
I now pass to a variety of the screw-desk, which has a small book-rest above the table. The whole structure rests upon a prolongation of the solid platform on which the reader's chair is placed, so that it is really exactly in front of the reader. My illustration ([fig. 143]) is from "The booke of the noble ladyes in frensh," a work by Boccacio; it was written in France early in the fifteenth century[533].
Fig. 144. Screw-desk. From a fifteenth century MS. in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris.