tapestries must have been, at one time,
excellent.

The leather required for these purposes
undergoes a process of tanning and currying,
differing from that to which leather for other
purposes is subjected. The old French leather
gilders about the times of Louis the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth generally employed
sheep-leather; but sometimes calf and lamb-
skins. The last two were better, but the first
was the cheapest. The dry skins of leather
were soaked in water, to mollify them; they
were then vigorously pommelled, to give
them suppleness. The leather was laid upon
a flat stone, and scraped and scraped until its
wrinkles were removed—not filled up, as with
the cosmetic of the wrinkled dowagers of the
old school—but fairly and honestly scraped
out of existence. There was a stretching
process effected at the same time, whereby
the leather became somewhat lengthened and
widened at the expense of its thickness. As
it is the fate of many skins to have defective
places, the workmen showed a nice skill in
trimming the margin of the hole or defective
spot, and pasting or glueing a little fragment
of leather so neatly over it so as to form an
invisible joint. When the leather was thus far
advanced, it was covered with leaf silver; for
it appears that, in those days, gilt leather was
not gilt leather; it was silvered leather
lacquered to a golden hue. The silverer
rubbed a little bit of parchment size over the
leather with his hand; and while this was yet
in a sticky or tactile state, he applied upon it
leaves of very thin beaten silver—not attenuated
to so extraordinary a degree as leaf-gold,
but still very thin. These leaves were, as
applied side by side on the leather, pressed
down by a fox's tail rolled into a sort of little
mop; and the leather was exposed to air and
sunshine until dry. This lacquer was a
mysterious mixture of resin, aloes, gum sandarach,
litharge, red lead, and linseed oil, brown in
colour, but assuming a golden hue when
backed by a silvery substance. The lacquer,
like a thick syrup, was laid on by the hand,
as the best possible lacquering brush;
and, after two or three applications, the
lacquered silver leather was dried in open
air. Sometimes the leather was coated with
leaf-copper, instead of leaf-silver; and in that
case the lacquer was required to be of a
different kind to produce the desired gold hue.
Then came the artistic work, the employment
of design as an adornment. Wood
blocks were engraved, much in the same way
as for the printing of floor-cloths and paper-
hangings—with this variation, that the
cavities or cut out portions constituted the
design, instead of the uncut parts of the
original surface. The design was printed on
the silvered leather by an ordinary press,
with the aid of a counter mould, if the relief
were required to be higher than usual;
the leather being previously moistened on
the under surface to facilitate the pressing.
There was thus produced a uniform golden
or silver surface, varied only by a stamped
or relievo pattern; but occasionally the
design was afterwards picked out with
colour.

The advocates for the use of gilt and
embossed leather tapestries have a formidable
list of good things to say in their favour.
They assert, in the first place, that leather
beats wool in its power of resisting damp and
insects—whether the light-minded moths of
the summer months, or the dull-souled creeping
things which have a tendency to lay their
eggs in woolly substances. They assert, also,
that well-prepared gilt leather will preserve
its splendour for a great length of time. And,
lastly, that a soft sponge and a little water
furnish an easy mode of cleansing the
surface, and keeping it bright and clear. These
various good qualities have induced one or
two firms in England and in France to
attempt the revival of leather tapestries. It
has been up-hill work to induce decorators
and connoisseurs to depart from the beaten
track, and adopt the old-new-material; but it
has taken root; it is growing; and many
sumptuous specimens are finding their way
into the houses of the wealthy. The ducal
mansions of the Norfolks and the Sutherlands,
the Hamiltons and the Wellingtons,
the Devonshires, the Somersets, and other
brave names, have something to show in this
way; and royalty has not been slow to take
part in the matter. The English revivers
adopt, we believe, many of those described as
having been followed by the old French workmen,
but with various improvements; among
others, they use gold-leaf instead of lacquered
silver-leaf—a very proper reform in these
California days.

The relief on the leather tapestries is very
low or slight, but by deepening the engraving
or embossment of the stamps, it can be made
much more bold. It thus arises that leathers
become available for a great variety of
ornamental purposes, varying from absolute
plainness of surface to very bold relief. Thus
we hear of the employment of adorned
leather for folding-screens, for cornices and
frames, for pendents and flower-borders, for
panellings, for relief ornaments to doors,
pilasters, shutters, architraves, friezes, and
ceilings; for chimney pieces, for subject-
panels, for arabesques and pateras; for mountings
in imitation of carvings; for decorations
to wine-coolers, dinner-waggons, tables, chairs,
pole-screens, and cheval screens; for bindings,
cases, and cabinets of various kinds; for
clock-cases and brackets, for consoles and
caryatides, for decorations in ships' cabins,
steamboat saloons, railway carriages—but we
must stop.

Some such things as these were produced
in the old times; but more can now be
effected. Pneumatic and hydraulic pressure
are now brought into play. Without diving
into the mysteries of the workman's sanctum,