In a cathedral city like Limoges, where the church itself has a good deal of interest and the town is not devoid of attraction, one is not readily inclined to place its industrial interests very high on the list of things to be seen; yet the fact remains that in this particular place the chief industry is closely bound up with the town’s history. The Limoges school of enamel workers had attained celebrity as early as the twelfth century, when the _champ-levé_, or engraving process, was in vogue, the ground-work of the plates consisting of graven copper and the cavities filled in with enamel. This kind of work may well be seen in Westminster Abbey upon the tomb of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke. In the fourteenth century France borrowed from Italy the art of transparent enamelling, which the artists at Limoges developed into enamel-painting, and this branch was carried on at Limoges for upwards of two centuries, until it fell into decay under Louis XIV. and gave place to the modern miniature style. Under François Ier this art of enamel-painting attained to a high degree of perfection. The sixteenth-century taste inclined always towards the brilliant and magnificent, and the same love of display and richness which showed both in dress and in architecture found also expression in the art of enamelling. One of the most famous artists of this school came from Limoges, whence he was known as Léonard Limousin. His work became the pattern of excellence after which all lesser artists strove. “While some of the works were executed in brilliant colours, most of them were in monochrome. The background was generally dark, either black or deep purple, and the design was painted _en grisaille_, relieved, in the case of figure subjects, by delicate carnation. The effect was occasionally heightened by appropriate touches of gold, and in many of the coloured enamels brilliancy was obtained by the use of silver foil, or paillon, placed beneath a transparent enamel.”