Among the smaller metal work of domestic use, the firedogs, firebacks, hinges, locks and other parts of furniture, there is no lack of examples. The slabs of cast iron that are known as firebacks were very generally used as spaces for heraldry, the emphatic central position which they shared with the chimney-piece making them similarly appropriate. With the revival of dog-grates the accompanying fireback has also returned to favour, and a study of old castings therefore becomes additionally necessary. The Tudor examples are usually very excellent and bold in design, as in that illustrated here (Fig. 179), which displays the Royal Arms, probably of Henry VIII. In a form of work which is to be subjected to the action of fire, and even to be seen for the most part through lighted fuel, a design is obviously fitting in proportion to the degree of elimination of unessential detail that is effected, and in the case in point this has been most efficiently done. The arms, and the lower part of the centre generally, are much fireworn, but anything of this nature simpler and finer in pose and modelling than are the supporters it would be difficult to find, while the proportion and spacing of the whole composition leave nothing to be desired. Fig. 180 is another well-designed Tudor example, the arms being those of Queen Elizabeth, who sometimes used the greyhound for a supporter as her father had done, instead of the dragon. [Illustration: FIG. 179.--Armorial Fireback. English. Sixteenth Century.] [Illustration: FIG. 180.--Armorial Fireback. English. Sixteenth Century.] It must be remembered, in designing firebacks, that the work is to be carried out by casting and should therefore be of suitable character. Casting is necessary because every time that wrought iron becomes red-hot and cools again it scales, and so loses a considerable thickness of material in a comparatively short time, a disadvantage that does not exist in the cast metal. The design in most cases is treated panel-wise within a raised border, but in the later backs the outline of the design, of the mantling and crest, sometimes formed the edge of the fireback without a containing rim. A space at the bottom, the part that was most embedded in the fire, is frequently left plain, or simply fluted. [Illustration: FIG. 181.--Mortar in Cast Bronze.] Fig. 181 is also interesting as heraldry in cast metal, which in this case is bronze; and an Italian example is found in the arms of the Martelli, cast in bronze by Donatello (Fig. 182), which has much spirit, but lacks the excellent distribution of the same creature on the decorative shield for the Palazzo Guadagni now in the Museum at South Kensington. [Illustration: FIG. 182.--Arms of the Martelli, by Donatello.]