In the same collection is a cupboard of similar date carved with two very protuberant heads, and an example of the rebus which was popular in those days. The founder of a building, or the owner of a piece of furniture, was fond of making a play on his name, expressing it by means of objects. In this case the centre panel has the initials A. W., and a barrel or tun supposed to be fastened on a wall, and the name, Mr. Roe concludes (p. 103), is 'Walton.' A well-known stone example in which the tun figures is on the inner walls of the front quadrangle of Lincoln College, Oxford, with the addition of a beacon on it. The name represented is that of Beckington, a great benefactor of the college. The most profuse instance is perhaps in Bishop Langton's chantry at Winchester. He died in 1501. The vine is carved in wood springing from a tun, indicative of his see, Winton, and on the groining is his own rebus, a long tun carved in stone. A hen on a tun stands for his prior, Hunton. The tun is a chief decorative motive of the groining, being repeated perhaps sixteen times.

Such ornamental use of so prosaic an object reminds us of the festoons of knuckle-bones serving an admirable decorative purpose upon some Florentine stone chimneypieces of the Renaissance.