Chair from the Past Look closely, and you’ll see three sets of leaves on this leg -- they sort of look like shells.  Do you know what kind of leaves they are?  If you lived 200 years ago, you would instantly identify them as leaves from the acanthus plant, a prickly shrub that grows near the Mediterranean Sea.  You would have known this because, ever since the Greeks first ornamented the tops of their columns 2,500 years ago, artists have decorated furniture, architecture, and manuscripts with this popular leaf.
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