Switzerland has long been famous for its wood carving, and many of the curios found in this country have come from the Swiss mountain villages. No doubt some of our readers have come across the old pin poppets which boys and girls carried with them to the village school half a century or more ago. The girls filled them with pins and needles, bodkin and stiletto, and the boys with pencils and pens. In Fig. 75 two curious old pin boxes are illustrated. The _pins_ shown on the same page are, however, of much older date; they are, in fact, merely thorns; these interesting and authentic relics of the "common objects of the home," or perhaps more correctly described, of dress, are to be seen in the National Collection of Wales at Cardiff, the measuring stick shown in the photograph giving their size. The pin poppet, as its name denotes, was, however, intended originally for the requirements of the early needleworker who at the dames' school won renown in those great achievements--the samplers of old. These, however, do not exhaust the wood-carving curios of the workbox, but they may serve to remind collectors of what they may hope to discover in their hunt for household curios. The Needlewoman. The curiosities much prized to-day, the work of the needlewoman, or those who plied the needle chiefly for purposes of amusement or to give pleasure to those on whom they bestowed the products of their skill, are met with in many distinct forms. This is not a work on needlework, or we might tell of the various stitches which are indicative of certain periods. It is, however, admissible to mention some of the household curios, the product of such patient labour applied to the skilful manipulation of silks and threads and cottons and wools, of all colours and substances, embroidered or worked on canvas or other fabric. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--THREE OLD WORKBOXES. (_In the collection of Mr. Phillips, of Hitchin._)] The mistresses of the old English homes were very industrious. They worked crewel bed hangings and cross-stitch and tent-stitch upholstery in the seventeenth century, and in still earlier times richly ornamented linens and other fabrics with flowers and scriptural subjects. Writing in reference to Queen Mary, the wife of William III, Sir Charles Sedley said:-- "When she rode in coach abroad She was always knotting thread." And her example was followed by many in humbler circumstances. In later years women have wrought needlework and beadwork pictures, and have even threaded their needles with human hair when no silk could be found fine enough.