MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 97' 



the simplicity or complexity of the pattern of the lace, &c. This lace 

 is produced with equal facility, plain or figured ; and for the purpose 

 of blinds for windows, or for bird cages, the repeated pressures to 

 which it is subjected, in rolling between the plates of metal to be orna- 

 mented, much improve its quality for such applications. 



In the present state of the invention, it appears very difficult to 

 place any limit to the nature of the materials out of which patterns 

 may be made ; as, for instance, the writer of this notice picked up, in 

 an afternoon ramble in the country, two or three specimens of what 

 Coleridge has so poetically described as 



" Brown skeletons of leaves that lag 

 Sly forest brook along." 



These placed between plates of previously rolled soft metal, and sub- 

 jected to pressure, on the separation of the plates each disclosed the 

 delicate markings of the tender frame work upon which the vegetable 

 matter that makes up the leaf had been stretched ; not a single spar or 

 rib was wanting. These impressions could be printed from with ease, 

 and would serve as illustrations of the structural form of leaves for the 

 use of those interested in the study of the science of botany. Very 

 excellent impressions may, in like manner, be procured from lace, 

 and the lace manufacturer has thus at his command the means of pro- 

 ducing a pattern book of his designs without the trouble or expense 

 of engraving the same ; the depth of the indentation is sufficient to 

 hold the necessary quantity of ink to produce an impression by means 

 of the ordinary copper-plate press, or by surface-block printing. As, 

 however, in the first instance, it is intended to use the process more 

 particularly for the purpose of ornamenting those portions of the sur- 

 faces of manufactured objects in electro-plate, which have hitherto 

 been left plain, it is unnecessary to enter more minutely into the 

 description of the same, as applied to printing ; its perfect applica- 

 bility has, however, been sufficiently clearly demonstrated, and, in the 

 present instance, has been indicated in order to show to what extent 

 one invention may affect or assist other departments of trade than the 

 individual one for which it was originally intended. No doubt can 

 exist as to the present invention superseding, to a great extent, in the 

 production of an universal class of goods, the method of ornamenta- 

 tion by means of engraving. The delicate reticulations of the lace 

 markings gives a richness of appearance hitherto unattainable with- 

 out a corresponding addition of cost for engraving and embossing, 

 and which placed them beyond the reach of an ordinary class of 

 purchasers. 



Objects may be manufactured from ornamented Britannia metal 

 sheet by the process of " spinning," a mode of production which 

 entirely throws into the shade, all others employed for securing, in the 

 objects produced, elegance of outline ; the pressure of tools used in the 

 process does not remove the markings produced by the various medi- 

 ums employed to produce the ornamental metal. The ordinary method 

 of raising the metal into shape by the stamp and die may also be taken 



