It is during the process of decoration that the ornate vases and figures make so many trips to the fire. The artist department is a very large and important one. The designers, however, are a class of themselves. They project the idea; it is the business of the artist, in these circumstances, to execute it. The painters are taken into the works as lads and trained for the special service. What you remark chiefly in going through the decorating rooms is the great facility of the artists. You see a man with a plate or vase on which he is outlining a landscape, and you marvel at the rapid, accurate touches with which he does the work. Flowers, birds, and figures they can reproduce with great skill, and many of them are artists not merely in facility but in instinct. They work with metallic colours only. They rely on copper, for instance, to give black and green, on iron to yield red hues, and so on; and the gold work is done with what seems to be a dirty brown paste, but is really pure gold mixed with flux and quicksilver. When the first wash is put on, the piece must be fired, so that the colours shall be burnt into the glaze. Then it returns to the painter, who adds the next touches so far as he can; the firing again follows; the piece is returned to him once more; and so on it goes till the work is complete. It is therefore a highly technical business, especially as the colours change very much in the fire, and the painter has to work with full knowledge of the chemical processes in every firing. There is one form of the decorative process which is very singular--that is, the piercing work. The artist has the vase in the dried state before the firing, and with a tiny, sharp-pointed knife he cuts out little pieces according to the design in his mind, and produces an extremely beautiful perforated ware, the elaborate pattern and the lace-like delicacy of which almost repel the idea that the work is done by the unaided hand of man. In the colour processes, the work is virtually complete when the dull gold has been burnished; and the porcelain is then ready to be transferred to the showrooms, or exported to America, which is the greatest patron, at present, of Worcester art. America, however, failed to retain one lovely vase no less than four feet high, the largest ever made in the works; it was taken to the Chicago Exhibition and back without accident, and was then sold in England for one thousand pounds.