Steel jewellery appears to have been invented in England, and from Birmingham, the centre of its manufacture, found its way all over Europe, reaching France by way of Holland. It was carried out largely by Boulton and Watt and other firms of Birmingham, Sheffield, and Wolverhampton. This steel jewellery, which was in high favour in the latter half of the eighteenth, continued to be worn until the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when it finally went out of fashion. Even after that, cut steel was still made at Birmingham, and the firm of Hipkins, one of the most prominent, continued for many years to supply the Court of Spain with buttons and buckles ornamented with it (Pl. LI, 1, 2). Steel was largely employed as mounts for the fictile cameos of Wedgwood, Tassie, Adams, and Turner, which were in considerable demand for rings, brooches and buttons. Mountings for these were also made in silver or Sheffield plate, principally the work of Thomas Law & Co., of Sheffield. In the latter part of the century England occupied a unique position with regard to the production of objects of this kind, which were eagerly sought for throughout the whole of the Continent. Another characteristic of the changed condition of the times was the use in jewellery, together with strass, false pearls, and marcasite, of various substitutes for gold. The best-known of these substitutes was "pinchbeck," so called after its inventor, Christopher Pinchbeck (d. 1732), a clock and watch maker, of Fleet Street. This pinchbeck gold was an alloy of copper and zinc. When fused together the metals assumed the colour of fine gold, and preserved for a time a bright and unoxidised surface, though in some cases objects thus fashioned received a washing of gold. Pinchbeck was much used for cheaper jewellery of all kinds. The larger articles made of this metal were chatelaines, snuff-boxes, and étuis, while watch-cases, miniature-frames, buckles, clasps, and so forth, are to be found for the most part ornamented in relief and carefully chased. These several articles to which pinchbeck was suited, went in those days by the name of "toys". The term "Toyman" was employed by Pinchbeck himself, but the title had, of course, no reference to what are now known as toys. In France and Germany a metal composition like gold, in imitation of pinchbeck, called _Similor_ or "goldshine," was produced, first by Renty, of Lille, about 1729, and subsequently improved by Leblanc, of Paris. But the name of the English inventor of the metal was well known in France, where it was retained in such forms as "pinsebeck" or "pinsbeck." * * *