Persian art is peculiarly specialistic in its treatment. The designs used by the metal-workers in that country from quite early days were emblematic and of an all-over conventional type, often interwoven with scenes. Even many of the common vessels, like bowls and covers and saucers of brass, are cleverly chased with hunting scenes and floral attributes, many of the cups being covered with arabesque ornament. Some of the brass egg-shaped hooker bases are chased in relief; the mounts of the rose-water ewers--which are often of china, with metal linings for holding ice--are frequently decorative. In many instances the vessels are ornamented with coloured inlays, giving them peculiar colour effects. Damascus--always an important seat of metal-work--has supplied collectors from many countries with the beautifully incised ornament produced by filling in the cut spaces with fine gold or silver wire beaten into the brass and then polished. So important has this mode of giving relief become that damascened metal stands alone as an art, seen at its best in the wonderful armour of the later period, when the utility of plate armour was giving way to the ornament which embellished the State armour--the "dress suits" of the regimentals of the Stuart days. How some Oriental Curios are Derived. It is useful at times to consider how the curios we collect have gradually accumulated, and thus to ascertain how they have been secured in the past; and from that we are enabled to form some estimate of further supplies, for the law of supply and demand regulates to some extent the market value of curios; it has something to do with the direction taken by curio-hunters. Many curios have come into this country as the result of war and loot. Wars in the Far East have served the collector, and many choice bits of metal-work have changed hands at nominal sums after the return of troops employed in minor wars and punitive expeditions. Our vast Indian Empire, however, supplies many beautiful objects in metal, both ancient and of comparatively recent days, but even those are so quaint and so unlike the common objects of British make with which we are familiar that they are welcomed and find a fitting place among antique copper and brass.