With two lights detachable for use of standard as a single light. Removable nozzles. Date about 1800. Showing signs of copper owing to bad usage. (_In the collection of Author._)] These are trade matters, but interesting withal, as they show the rapid rise under careful and patient intuition of skilled craftsmen whose resplendent models tempted the Continent to buy our replicas where perhaps the original work was either not proffered for sale or was too expensive for the continental market. We give another illustration (p. 75) of two table candlesticks, 1797 in date, sent out, as the catalogue states, by R. C. & Co. (Robert Cadman and Company). In one example we have the favourite design of the ostrich feathers beloved of Hepplewhite and others in the chair backs of the same period. The classic influence of Adam is waning. There is nothing purely Grecian in the column. The Ionic pillar has long since disappeared. We have something as a substitute in design. The Maltese cross as a novelty finds itself as a feature in the design. It is composite, it is in a measure feeble in comparison with previous designs. It marks the oncoming period. It is just the sign of something confused in the design. We shall soon see something not only confused but extremely mixed and utterly banal with false and meretricious ornament, with little meaning except that here it stands, as ornament or as attempt at ornament, but as to balance or symmetry--that has been irretrievably lost. The age of decadence no one can explain. One marvels as much at ineptitude as at beauty in design. Happily the Sheffield designers went backwards for some of their designs in a period that threatened decadence. The smaller of the candlesticks (illustrated, p. 75) suggests the reticence and simplicity of a brass candlestick of the Stuart period. As such it must be regarded. It stands quietly unassailable in its English dignity. A fine clean-cut example, in date 1785, of pure design, with facets sharply cut and decorated with acanthus leaf design in due subjection, is illustrated (p. 83). The urn stem and the urn nozzle determine the period, and the candlestick stands on a fine round base. Its clear defined reticence is almost like cut steel work on a minor plane of the same period, such as frames to cameos and later adapted to purses and chatelaines. Cut steel mounts to clock faces belonged to the coming Empire days. Here, in this candlestick illustrated, is an indication of facetted work as clean cut as glass, which in its working and in its technique is a metal too.