FILLIGREE WORK. This work is a kind of enrichment on gold or silver, wrought delicately in the manner of little threads or grains, or both intermixed. In this kind of work, fine gold and silver wire are often curled in a serpentine form and braided through each other, or form ed into festoons and various ornaments, entwisting the threads to give them a very beautiful effect. This art is very ancient, and was brought into Europe from the east. It was formerly much used for decorating images and the tombs of saints. The Ilindoos and Chinese make some beautiful works of this kind, with tools which are very coarse and clumsy. The Malay jewellers make a great deal of silver filigree work, and gold also. They either melt their gold in an earthen rice pot or in a clay crucible. They blow their fires with their mouth, through bamboo tubes, and they draw their wire much as we do ourselves; after having drawn it sufficiently fine, they flatten it on the anvil, and give it a pecu liar twist by rubbing it on a block with a flat stick. They then form it into leaves and flowers by handiwork, until they have the number to form the pattern they wish to execute on the plate. They
always have the pattern beside them of the full size they wish to form on the gold plate. They fix their work with a gluti nous substance made of a berry ground on a stone. They keep this substance on a piece of cocoa nut. After all the leaves of the filigree is laid on the plate—stuck on bit by bit—a solder is prepared of gold filings and borax moistened with water, which they strew over the plate, then put it in the fire till the whole becomes united. In making open work the foliage is stuck on a card with the berry paste, then the work is strewn over with the solder and put into the fire, when the card burns away and the whole remains united. If the piece is very large it is soldered seve ral times. When the filigree is finished, they cleanse it by boiling it in common salt water and alum, and they give it a fine purple color by boiling it in water with sulphur. Except in India, China, and some parts of Turkey, this art is much neglected at present.