Iron skewers were so plated with silver and steel blades of knives. An iron skewer made in Ireland is marked "Sly. Dublin," and the marks of the makers of the close plated work are as difficult to trace and identify as some of the others in the process of plating by fusion. Horday & Co. is found on some late examples, and the _fleur-de-lys_ is another mark frequently seen. The close plating process seems to have been followed both at Birmingham and Sheffield from about 1795, and was subsequently employed in London. The base for close plating was mainly iron or steel. Instead of resorting to the longer and more expensive mechanical process of fusion and rolling, the article intended to be plated with silver was covered with a thin sheet of silver and while hot it was burnished down to the core of the baser metal, by means of a compound of lead and tin, which, employed at a low temperature, did not lessen the temper of the article thus plated. It is to be observed, however, that the permanency of close plated articles cannot be compared with those produced under the rolling process. Whatever may be the reason there seems to be a weakness in the technique, for it is found that they are strongly affected by exposure to damp or extreme heat. =The Buckle Makers.=--It has been asserted that Boulsover made buckles; this is unlikely. The trade had mainly settled in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and there was an extensive trade carried on in London. The fashion of the buckle underwent many vicissitudes in fortune. The Puritans adopted shoe strings. It was in Stuart days that Herrick sang of his mistress: A careless shoe string, in whose tie I see a wild civility. Silk laces with silver fringes and tags were in fashion on the eve of the Restoration, although the common folk confined themselves to leather laces. All through the eighteenth century the buckle was worn. Sometimes, happily for the buckle makers, the fashions grew so extravagant that the ladies wore such large square buckles either of silver or silver plated as almost to conceal their feet. Towards the end of the century fashion deserted the buckle makers and they were in a parlous state. It was natural that they termed the displacement "the most ridiculous of all ridiculous fashions the effeminate shoe string." Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton employed no less than twenty thousand workers in the buckle industry, and they could ill afford to be flouted by the fickle jade Fashion.