r and
pressed, it was composed of a basis of wood, covered over with a black
lacquer, on which the design was painted in colours. It was made under
considerable difficulties, in that it had to compete with the imported
Oriental wares which were made in China and Japan under more favourable
natural conditions.

The art of japanning was revived in England late in the eighteenth
century, and some remarkable pieces appear to have been the work of
amateurs who painted and gilded so-called lacquer work, tea caddies, and
jewelled caskets. It must be remembered that the art of japanning was
looked upon at one time as an accomplishment, for about the year 1700
many gentlewomen were taught the art.

French artists took up the Oriental style, and produced some very
successful lacquer work, striking out in an entirely distinct style,
which, as Vernis Martin decoration, became famous. The varnish or
lacquer forming the foundation for those delightful little pictures was
not unlike in effect the Oriental lacquer which to some extent it was
intended to imitate.

In the early nineteenth century lacquering as an art fell into
disrepute, and such decorations were largely associated with the
commoner metal wares, stoved and lacquered by the so-called japanning
process carried out in Birmingham and other places, although there is
now some admiration shown by collectors for small trays, bread baskets,
candle boxes, and snuffer trays of metal, japanned and decorated by hand
in colours and much fine gold pencilling.

The Tool Chest.

There have been amateur mechanics in all ages, and among the household
curios are many old tools suggestive of having been made when the
carpenter had plenty of time on his hands to decorate his tools with
carvings, and frequently to make up his own kit. Thus old planes and
braces were evidently the work of men who possessed some humour and
skill, too, for some of the carved decoration is quite grotesque. There
is a fine collection of old tools made and used in the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries on view in one of our museums. There is a
carpenter's plough, dated 1750, moulding planes and skew-mouthed
fillisters of beechwood, and a router plane of carved hornbeam. The
modern hand brace becomes more realistic, and its origin understood at a
glance when we examine the old hand brace of turned and carved boxwood,
dated 1642, in that collection. The part where the bit is fitted is
literally a hand