What is lac?--Its early introduction into this country--"The Chinese taste"--Colour versus form--Peculiarities of the lacquered clock-case--The English school--English amateur imitators--Painted furniture not lacquered work--The inn clock. Lacquered work is the most un-English style of decoration that has ever been employed by the cabinet-maker in the embellishment of his furniture. It came from the East and was introduced into this country about the same period as tea-drinking. At first tea was drunk by fashionable folk from cups without handles, now it is the national beverage. Lac is a natural product of China, the sap of a tree in appearance resembling our ash-tree. It is not an artificial compound of resin and oils, worked down by turpentine. This natural gum is refined and coloured red, black, golden yellow, green, or grey. The surface of the wood is carefully prepared, and a ground is laid on by degrees, care being taken that each is of the right temperature and perfectly hard and dry before any layer is applied. Never less than three and sometimes as many as eighteen thin layers are thus applied to the surface of the wood before the actual decoration of this ground by the artist commences. In regard to the use of lac in this country, practical experts have questioned as to whether it is possible in a climate like this to effect the clean drying so necessary to attain perfection. London and other cities, on account of their dust-charged atmosphere, are unsuited for lacquer work. The artist draws his design of landscape or figures or birds or flowers, filling his details with gold or silver and superimposed colours built up with mastic, of those parts which are intended to be in slight relief. The Japanese brought the art of lacquer to the highest perfection. To those readers who desire to see the art of lacquer shown in its various stages, there is in the Botanical Museum at Kew Gardens a collection of specimens in various stages, including sections of the lacquer-tree, from which the lac exudes, and of various coloured lacs, and examples illustrating no less than fifty different methods of lacquering sword-sheaths. An examination of lacquer work is to be found in _Chinese Art_, vol. i, by Dr. Stephen W. Bushell, formerly physician to His Majesty's Legation at Peking. In the print-room of the Imperial Library at Paris is an album with drawings of the processes and explanatory notes. The Lacquer Industry in Japan forms a Report of His Majesty's Acting-Consul at Hakodate (Mr. J. J. Quin), printed as a Parliamentary Paper in 1882.