The most highly prized work of China and Japan in the way of decorative furniture is the beautiful lacquer work, and in the notice on French furniture of the eighteenth century, in a subsequent chapter, we shall see that the process was adopted in Holland, France, and England with more or less success. It is worth while, however, to allude to it here a little more fully. The process as practised in China is thus described by M. Jacquemart:-- "The wood when smoothly planed is covered with a sheet of thin paper or silk gauze, over which is spread a thick coating made of powdered red sandstone and buffalo's gall. This is allowed to dry, after which it is polished and rubbed with wax, or else receives a wash of gum water, holding chalk in solution. The varnish is laid on with a flat brush, and the article is placed in a damp drying room, whence it passes into the hands of a workman, who moistens and again polishes it with a piece of very fine grained soft clay slate, or with the stalks of the horse-tail or shave grass. It then receives a second coating of lacquer, and when dry is once more polished. These operations are repeated until the surface becomes perfectly smooth and lustrous. There are never applied less than three coatings and seldom more than eighteen, though some old Chinese and some Japan ware are said to have received upwards of twenty. As regards China, this seems quite exceptional, for there is in the Louvre a piece with the legend 'lou-tinsg,' _i.e._, six coatings, implying that even so many are unusual enough to be worthy of special mention." There is as much difference between different kinds and qualities of lac as between different classes of marqueterie. The most highly prized is the LACQUER ON GOLD GROUND, and the first specimens of this work which reached Europe during the time of Louis XV. were presentation pieces from the Japanese Princes to some of the Dutch officials. This lacquer on gold ground is rarely found in furniture, and only as a rule in some of those charming little boxes, in which the luminous effect of the lac is heightened by the introduction of silver foliage on a minute scale, or of tiny landscape work and figures charmingly treated, partly with dull gold, and partly with gold highly burnished. Small placques of this beautiful ware were used for some of the choicest pieces of furniture made for Marie Antoinette, and mounted by Gouthière.