The most important of these is the goldsmith and enameller Jean Toutin of Châteaudun, whose plates--six in number, dated 1618 and 1619--are filled with charming motives for watch-cases or lockets, to be carried out in enamel. They are ornamented with patterns reserved in white on black ground in the form of trailing leaves and tendrils, partly in the "pea-pod" style, and accompanied by lively genre figures in various attitudes. Perhaps the most attractive of these plates is that which represents a jeweller--probably Toutin himself--firing a jewel which he holds in the furnace by a pair of long tongs, while above is figured a model of the actual jewel--an octagonal box-like pendant (p. 289). Toutin, who appears to have been an experimenter in enamels, is entitled to distinction as the discoverer of a new process of using them. The process consisted in covering a plate of gold or copper with an opaque monochromatic enamel, on which designs were painted with colours, opaque and fusible, and of greater variety than had previously been employed. This method of enamel painting, extensively used for jewellery, proved to be peculiarly suitable to the representation of natural flowers which came into high favour about the same time. The employment of naturalistic flower designs, as displayed on the margins of manuscripts, was one of the features of late Gothic art. The same tendency with regard to flowers was manifested on the enamelled jewellery of the fifteenth century, the most striking example of which is the wonderful necklace seen on the Flemish portrait of Maria Baroncelli in the Uffizi Gallery. Renaissance ornaments on the whole did not favour naturalistic floral patterns, though flowers enamelled in full relief are occasionally found, as on the border of the Phoenix Jewel in the British Museum. The general return in the early part of the seventeenth century to flower designs for the decoration of jewellery is associated with a curious phase in the social history of the time that accompanied the deep interest then taken in flowers and horticulture. Among flowers, of which the Dutch have ever been enthusiastically fond, and never tired of growing and of painting, the most prominent position was occupied by the tulip. From about the year 1634 the cultivation of the tulip became a perfect craze in Holland, and "Tulipomania" like a violent epidemic seized upon all classes of the community. Gambling of an almost unparalleled nature was carried on in the bulbs, and the flower became fashionable everywhere. In the bouquets which the enamellers arranged with great taste, and painted with extraordinary skill, the tulip is always prominent.