emery paper is best, and really good _sand_ paper may also
be used, but all paper should have very little "cut," should be applied
dry, and allowed to become clogged, so as to act principally as a hard
dry rubber or burnisher. If the polishing is at all in excess the wood
will get rubbed or worn down below the metal. The fine finish required
when tortoiseshell and metal are used is got by rubbing with blocks of
charcoal used endways with oil and the finest rotten-stone powder, much
like polishing marble, using oil instead of water. Wet polishing should
not be used for inlaid works; the water may soften the glue. A
superficial wetting is likely to warp the woods and make them curl up at
the edges, and the grain of the wood is almost certain to rise. Oil is
better than water, but light woods are almost certain to become stained
by polishing powders and fluid. To avoid this modern marquetry is often
covered with varnish applied with friction like French polish, or laid
on in several coats with a brush and polished off with pumice and rotten
stone, like the Vernis Martin, being first levelled with a file or
scraper and smoothed with glass-paper.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The panel illustrated from the Albert and Victoria Museum is a good
average specimen of this kind, but not quite a masterpiece.

THE LIMITATIONS AND CAPABILITIES OF THE ART

The process described, by which the early works in intarsia were
produced, was slow and tedious; and, as may be supposed, though fame
might be won by its exercise, the winning of fortune was a very
different thing. Domenico di Nicolo, who made the stalls in the chapel
of the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, and was thence called "del Coro," or
"dei Cori," a name which descended to his children in place of their
proper name of Spinelli, is an example in point. The petitions to the
priors already referred to, printed in Milanesi's Documenti per la
Storia dell' Arte Senese, show how little a man of talent, who was
constantly employed for many years and gained great reputation in his
art, could do to provide for his old age; and many returns of both
painters, sculptors, and woodworkers, made for the purposes of taxation
and printed in the same book, show that even in a great and flourishing
town like Siena, which prided itself on its artistic reputation, it was
often most difficult for the craftsmen, on whose work that reputation
was based, to make a living.[4] It is true that there were thirty-f