tended application, and its means are so simple that it will be difficult to vulgarize it. Obviously it must be very bad ornament indeed to offend the eye when delicately traced in silver and gold on a ground of pure black. An older method of decorative metal work-silver inlaid in a black material resembling pewter, but much harder-is known as Bidree ware, from the old Mohammedan town of Beder, where it is believed to have originated. The pattern and not the ground is here graven and channelled, and tiny plates and wires of silver cut to shape with scissors are hammered into the forms, the final polishing resulting in a silver mosaic on a fine-toned mat black, which, however, is scarcely black. Formerly the designs were bold as well as delicate, and portions of the dark field were left, while now an equal distribution is aimed at. Both notions are sound enough, but the exclusive practice of the latter gives the work an air of monotony. Hyderabad, in the Deccan, is the modern seat of this manufacture. but it is also practiced at Lucknow. In Southern India, at Tanjore and Madura, copper vessels, trays, etc., incrusted with silver cut in the forms of fishes, animals, flowers, and ornaments of distinctly Turanian character, are produced. The silver is worked in thicker pieces than seems necessary to the effect, and when new the contrast between the red copper and the white silver is more pronounced than pleasing. One of the most important varieties of surface decoration in metal is damascen BEATEN WORK IN COPPER FOR THE GOLDEN TEMPLE," OR DURBAR SAHIB," AMRITZA, SIKH, MODERN. in principle with, and strongly resembles in detail, the damascening of Syria, which also was like Spanish and Venetian work. In the days-only just passed by-when the Punjab was the battle-ground of India, arms were the most important manufacture of its large towns. Even now a native prince occasionally turns out his cavalry escort in chain or plate armor, and there still survive workmen who have been employed all their lives on defensive gear, the counterpart of which is to be found depicted in the Bayeux tapestry; for although the use of armor may have been originated in the East, it never attained the wonderfully elaborate development which clothed the later Christian knight as completely in flexible steel as an armadillo is clothed by its scales. The round basnet with movable nose-guard and dependent curtain of chain-mail is still made here exactly as it was worn by the Paynim host in the time of the Crusades; and the char aina-four platesthe prototypes of the skillfully fitted plate-armor of Europe, survive in their pristine simplicity. But now, Othello's occupation being gone in great part, the artificers have turned their attention to forging caskets, candlesticks, cups, salvers, shields (for decorative purposes), and a hundred similar things, the supply of which seems more than equal to the demand. It is vexatious to see an inkstand made out of a jockey-cap, a horseshoe, a hunting-whip, and a saddle copied in good red gold and honest blue steel; but the workman is scarcely to blame if inanities of this sort are demanded from him. Here, as in other branches of Indian work, are large numbers of skillful men, who really possess good art traditions, ready and willing to re spond to a demand for the best they can do. Some of them, such as Ibrahim of Gujerat, Kuth Din of Sialkot, and others, are capable of artistic and well-considered design. Generally speaking, modern damascening, or koft-work, is apt to degenerate into minute and meaningless ornament, as if the infiltration marks on a moss-agate or sea-weed forms had been copied. The gold wire, too, is replaced by a merely superficial gilding sometimes, while, for the sake of cheapness, gold and silver of inferior purity are used. The metal chasing of Cashmere is of Persian origin, and copper is the favorite material. Arabesque ornaments that sometimes recall the fine patterns on old Persian wine bowls, but more frequently a uniform distribution of minute details resembling the shawl patterns, are engraven, and then filled with lac, the raised parts being tinned like Moradabad niello, only in the Cashmere work the surface is not made so mechanically perfect. Besides this pleasant roughness, which gives a better tone to the Cashmere ware, the design is in a quite different style and feeling. Silver is treated in a similar way, without a black ground, but sometimes with the addition of colored enamel, usually disagreeably raw and crude in color, and more often with a light gilding on the raised parts, which produces a singularly delicate and pleasing effect, the rest of the chased work being left in a peculiar tone of dead and half-burnished white, like snow and pearls just touched with gold. In nearly all modern Cashmere products the well-known pine form of the shawls may be considered the decorative unit, re-appearing in painted papier silver is more timid and tiny than it need be. An interesting example of the occasional value of religious endowments in preserving forms of art is afforded by the repoussé-work in copper done at Amritza, the sacred city of the Sikhs, for the Sikh temple known as the Golden Temple, or Durbar Sahib. The upper part of this building is covered with copper plates embossed and heavily gilded, while the lower portions and the surrounding pavements are an inlay of precious stones in marble, resembling the Agra pietra dura inlay, but differing in that, with Hindu freedom of fancy, human figures and creatures are introduced. The revenues of maché, wood-work, this temple not only support the priests, and metal. This but also keep agoing workshops where misruled country beaten-work in metal and marble inlay is liable to famines, are wrought. and in former times large numbers of workmen emigrated to the plains. "Cashmere" silver-work is now made at Lucknow, and at Amritza is an important trade in Cashmere shawls. WATER VESSEL, COPPER TINNED, OLD CASHMERE WARE. The silver-work which takes its name from the kingdom of Cutch, and the best of which is made at Bhuj, the capital of a native state north of the Bombay Presidency, is nowadays applied to articles of European use, and finds extensive sale. The workmen are Hindus, and among their ornaments figures of animals and occasionally of divinities are seen. Generally the patterns are of equally distributed scrolls and foliage in relief on a ground dotted or roughened by the punch. In buying this ware the weight of the silver is first charged, and then so much per rupee is added for workmanship-a rate which varies according to the elaboration and quality of the work. This practice is universal where metal is concerned. A mechanically better finished kind of silver repoussé on the same principle is made at Delhi, but the forms are apt to become meagre and thread-like. The collector at times comes across large pieces of embossed silver for which there seems to be no use in our civilized life, boldly hammered up and chased, with no suicidal attempt to smooth off the marks of hammer and chisel. These, though sometimes merely coarse and clumsy, have often a quite royal effect, and seem to indicate that our Western treatment of The application of vitreous enamel to metal is the choicest of Indian arts, and one of the few which can rival Japanese work in technical skill. No cloisonné, however, is done here. In the time of the Moguls enamel was used for arms, but it is now chiefly confined to articles of feminine adornment. That of Jeypoor (in Rajputana) is considered the finest, but Delhi almost equals it in quality of color. Both are remarkable for a beautiful red, a fine white, and great delicacy of finish. At Multan, Jhang, and other places in the Northern Punjab silver ornaments are enamelled in two tints of blue, a fine black, and inferior red and yellow. The best of this is champ levé, i. e., the enamel is filled into graven hollows, but in much of the ordinary work the metal, instead of being engraven, is beaten into a die, and the resulting raised line is consequently poor and mechanical. Bahawalpur, a native state on the Punjab border, has a reputation for semi-translucent blue and sea-green enamel, applied to large pieces, some of the gilded surface being left plain or only chased in lines, with admirable effect. But the supply is limited, and the work is more costly than it need be. There is a pretty variety of semi-transparent green enamel incrusted with gold figures and ornaments delicately lined, known as Pertabghur enamel, which is now one of the numerous crafts of Delhi. Some of the most interesting of this class, from an artist's point of view, is the comparatively rude work done at Kangra, in NECKLACE, ENAMEL ON SILVER, SEMI-BARBARIC HILL WORK, FROM KANGRA, PUNJAB. the lower Punjab | known abroad, such as the gold-work of Indian jewelry is too vast a subject to be adequate ly treated in so brief and general a sketch as this. The universal custom of putting savings by in the form of gold and silver ornaments necessitates the presence of a silversmith in every village. The wife of a peasant whose gross annual income is but two hundred rupees, all told, and whose house is furnished only with a bed and a few cooking pots, wears on her person from fifty to eighty rupees' worth of ornaments, and other classes in proportion. The nostrils are sometimes pierced and the ears riddled with perforations from top to bottom of the distorted lobes; the ankles are by some castes loaded with heavy, bell-studded fetters, the wearing of which would be considered a grievous punishment by a Western belle; the head is laced with chains, studs, and plates; the arm is loaded sometimes from wrist to shoulder; toe rings are common, and occasionally rings on each finger are connected by chains with a large ornament or gold-set mirror on the back of the hand. All kinds of things are used for ornaments; natural marigolds are set with plates of talc, necklaces of cloves are considered good for the headache, and are certainly pretty; pewter, iron, brass, zinc, copper, glass, horn, shell, and lac are used for bangles, tons of glass and lac being annually worked up for this purpose alone. There is material for a volume in the quaint fancies and superstitions associated with precious stones, each of which is minutely classified in all possible varieties. Each caste and race also wears ornaments of distinctive forms, and though railway travelling has diffused geographical variations, it has by no means suppressed them. Without attempting more than a reference to this subject, it may be fairly said that the jewelry by which India is But little space is left for a notice of Indian work in wood. This is only known abroad by bibelots, which, though pretty, give no idea of the real strength of the native artificer-his treatment of wood in domestic architecture. To fitly understand this it is necessary to see such towns as Ahmedabad in Guzerat, Amritza and Lahore in the Punjab, the old doorways of Delhi, and many others scattered over the country. Even bibelots, however, may be characteristic, and the richly worked sandal-wood carving of Canara and Southern India, with its boldly undercut rows of whirling and fantastic figures and scrolls, is a not wholly despicable repetition of the crowded and coral-like incrustation of sculptures on Southern Hindu temples. The similar work of Surat and Bombay may be known by its flatter projection and the absence of figures, while the same material at Ahmedabad, where some of the best wood-carving in India is wrought, combines figures with ornament in a medium degree of relief. The black-wood furniture of Bombay is a naturalized importation, and being based on a false idea of wood construction, has degenerated into an elaborate and tiresome agglomeration of "curlie - wurlies, whigmaleeries, and open-steek'd hems," to quote Andrew Fairservice's apt description of thoughtless ornament. Chair, couch, or table is lost in a profusion of heavily carved open-white wood. At Dera Ismail Khan, in the work, the motive of which can scarcely be Punjab, fern-like scrolls of almost incredtraced. The sandal-wood, ivory, and bison- ible minuteness and delicacy are thus prohorn combinations of Vizagapatam are lit- duced on caskets, tables, and a large vatle more than a superior class of stationers' riety of objects, all of which, however, are goods. Nor is the ivory, pewter, and eb- and must be circular. If this fine quality ony mosaic in sandal-wood of the Bombay of surface-covering could be applied withwork-box of a much higher character. out the intervention of the lathe, it would At Bijnaur and Nagind (northwest prov- be a great gain. The domestic charpoy, inces) is localized a curious craft of mi- wedding stool, and spinning-wheel are still nute geometrical carving of surface diapers the chief native uses of the craft, and in ebony, in very low relief but beautifully among well-to-do people ivory studs and crisp execution. Combs, caskets, trays, other elaborations are added to their simenvelope boxes, and the like, are the usual ple forms. Sometimes pretty models of forms, but the supply is irregular. At cooking vessels are made in this material Mainpuri, in the same provinces, a dainty for wedding gifts, as also toy-like saucesort of damascening in dark hard wood is pans in silver or sometimes in bead-work. done, brass wire being inlaid in salvers, Obviously, if everybody gave real vessels, trays, etc., with that infinite fancy of flow- the bride would be buried in pots and pans. ing line that never fails the native craftsman. At Hushiarpur, in the Punjab, is a growing industry of shisham-wood inlaid with ivory and brass. The comparative freedom of design in this work reminds one of Italian tarsia. For cabinet-work, panels of any size could be supplied in any quantity. The present applications are chiefly desks, work-boxes, cabinets, and small articles of furniture. The wood is a dark red-brown, something like rosewood, but tougher and stronger. Hushiarpur is also strong in turned and lacquered wood-ware. Native house furniture is exceedingly simple, being limited usually to a bed and a stool or two. A part of each marriage outfit in Northern India is a charpoy (low bedstead), and a quaint, high-backed, low stool, both of turned wood ornamented with lac. Very little painting on wood is now done, and the lac surface, obtained by pressing what is virtually a stick of colored sealing-wax on the revolving object, is a harder and more solid covering than any paint. The heat developed by friction melts the lac, and farther friction with a bit of bamboo polishes a coat of color which resists dust, the great heat of the hot weather, and the damp of the rains. But there are many refinements in this most simple art. In Sindh and in the Punjab layer upon layer of colored lac of infinitesimal thinness is laid. Then with a stylus these coats are scratched through in a manner analogous to Italian sgraffito. Supposing red to have been laid first, then green, and lastly black, the black is scratched through for green leaves, the green and black for a red flower, and for a white line all are cut through to the Charming and characteristic as are the small wares in wood thus briefly described, there is a higher interest and often better art in Indian applications of wood to domestic architecture. There are few Northern towns which can not show whole house fronts carved with that peculiarly Oriental elaboration which seems to take no thought of time or expense. Balconies, windows, brackets, and cornices, occurring among stone, brick, or lime work, are ornamented with sunk flowers, enriched mouldings, columns, and pilasters, with a surety, crispness, and felicity which can only be appreciated when seen in their native sunshine. Considered as construction merely, some carpentry of other nations is perhaps sounder; but even in this respect there is nothing despicable. The reckless waste of the once fine forests-which the government is doing its best to remedy-has greatly enhanced the price of timber, and tends to choke a still living craft. architecture imported by the English has, however, done more grievous injury than can be estimated with calmness. Barracks, churches, and houses, designed for the most part by people who have had no education in architecture of any kind, but who are at best fair engineers, are looked upon by natives as authoritative examples, and their blank ugliness is copied with exasperating fidelity. The Municipal improvements, too, are often devastations, and the names of active district officers are given to new buildings of uniform hideousness which replace the quaintness, variety, and beauty of a naturally grown native street. There are |