The best English lacquer was made in this country between the years 1670 and 1710, and was a very successful imitation of the Oriental. At that time and during the following century very many tea caddies, trays, screens, trinket boxes, and even furniture, were imported; and it was those which English workmen copied, gradually increasing the variety of household goods for which that material was so suitable. [Illustration: FIG. 94.--OLD POWDER FLASKS. (_In the Victoria and Albert Museum._)] Old English lacquer differed from the more modern papier-mache in that instead of the pulp being composed entirely of paper, glued together 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.