A collection of copper and brass to be at all representative must be varied and cosmopolitan in selection. Such a collection should include vessels of utility and ornamental objects which show the aims of the artist who designed them. Incidentally, too, such objects exhibit the sameness of purpose existing in many lands; although the methods of domestic procedure and the ways of living vary until their common origin is scarcely recognizable. In such a collection of domestic curios the influence of Saracenic art is seen in the ewers and basins and similar vessels which come from the lands where the wild Arab tribes lived for centuries in an almost barbarous state on the edge of the Syrian desert. Many of these quaint hammered copper vessels are of barbaric beauty, such as, for instance, the coffee-pot shown in Fig. 64 and the basin in Fig. 65. There are some pleasing customs savouring of patriarchal days still practised by Arab races. Such, for instance, when the sheik has finished his morning meal he throws a stone into his brass or copper coffee-pot as a sign to his followers to strike camp. "Awake, for morning, in the bowl of night, Has flung the stone which puts the stars to flight, And, ho! the hunter of the East has caught the Sultan's turritt in a noose of light." [Illustration: FIG. 64.--COFFEE-POT OF HAMMERED COPPER FROM SYRIA.] The Arab metal-work is generally covered over with characteristic designs and distinctive styles. Equally characteristic is the finely engraved ornament on many small brass objects made by Arab craftsmen. This is exemplified in the small and beautifully engraved brass writing boxes which were once a feature among the educated scribes of Arab fame. One such case is to be seen in the British Museum, the work of Mahmud, son of Souker, of Bagdad, made in 1281. The style is said by experts to combine the art motives of Mesapotamia and Egypt, which in the thirteenth century very naturally met in Syria. Another distinctive style is noticeable in the art of the metal-workers of the Mameluke dynasty of Egypt; their arabesques showed more realistic foliage than the Arab decorations of an earlier date.