The beautiful Italian fan, with sea-nymphs upon a sandy shore, once belonging to the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette, and now in the possession of Mr. Burdett-Coutts, is an example of the best quality of piqué work. The stick is of horn of a light transparent golden hue. The panaches bear the crown and fleur-de-lys of France, and appear to be of somewhat later date than the brins and feuille, which may be put about 1760. The fan was acquired in Paris during the troublous times of the Revolution by the father of the late Rev. J. E. Edwards of Trentham, and exhibited by the last named at South Kensington in 1870. Upon the death of Mr. Edwards in 1885 it was purchased by the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Another method of ornamentation is that of delicate piercing, the surface of the stick remaining flat and without carving. These pierced ivory sticks are occasionally alternated with those of another material, as light golden tortoise-shell, horn, and, in an instance in the Wyatt collection, with a mount of classical landscape and Pompeian ornament, pierced cedar. The Italians, as also the Greeks, discovered early the resources offered to the artist by the material of ivory. Ariosto in his sixth elegy makes a charming reference to it in addressing his mistress: ‘As when ivory or marble wrought by the hand of the artist becomes unchangeable, so my heart, more inflexible than these, though it may fear the hand of the assassin, is incapable of receiving the image of any new love to remove thine which is engraven upon it.’ The richest sticks are either those in which the piercing is associated with carved panels or cartouches of figures, ornament, etc., with the ribbed backgrounds familiar to us in Chinese workmanship, or those of which the whole surface is treated in the most delicate relief, exhibiting the most consummate skill of handling. This is occasionally further enriched by gilding, silvering, and painting; in some instances, these several processes are associated, with the addition of mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell inlay. Mother-of-pearl is treated in precisely the same way as ivory, _i.e._ flat-pierced; pierced and carved; pierced, carved, and engraved; with, in some instances, the addition of painting, and occasionally tinsel and silvering or gilding.