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EXPOSITION, PARIS. 



American Manufacture*. The American 

 exhibit, owing to the delay of Congress in 

 voting on an appropriation, was not as large 

 as it would have been had more time been al- 

 lowed for preparations. The same cause pre- 

 vented the production of articles specially man- 

 ufactured for the exhibition, which was per- 

 haps not a detriment to the display, it being on 

 that account a truer exponent of the products 

 of the country. Several of the American mer- 

 chants and manufacturers who exhibited, such 

 as Tiffany & Co., Brewster & Co., the Waltham 

 Watch Company, and others, received very flat- 

 tering recognitions. Many of the most prom- 

 inent and useful of the peculiar products of the 

 United States were not exhibited at all. The 

 American exhibitors were, however, very for- 

 tunate in the assignment of prizes, and received 

 more than their proportion of all grades. For 

 agricultural implements all the first medals, all 

 the second, and a majority of the third were 

 awarded to American competitors. In ma- 

 chinery, weighing instruments, parlor organs, 

 beer, and instruments of precision, first prizes 

 were given to the .United States. In den- 

 tal instruments and artificial teeth the Amer- 

 icans carried off all the prizes. The highest 

 honors were awarded to Americans also in gold- 

 work, street cars, printing presses, sewing ma- 

 chines, and canned goods ; and in the class of 

 literature they received three of the five high- 

 est awards. 



The most interesting portion of the Tiffany 

 exhibit was their reproduction of the Cesnola 

 collection of gold ornaments discovered in the 

 excavations on the island of Cyprus, and pre- 

 served in the Metropolitan Museum in New 

 York. The reproductions were so perfect as 

 to be almost indistinguishable from the origi- 

 nals. They were so well appreciated that a 

 goodly number of the pieces were purchased 

 for a Paris museum, and duplicates were or- 

 dered for the museums in Berlin and Vienna. 

 A whole wing of Tiffany's court was taken up 

 with the silver service made, at a cost of over 

 $125,000, for Mackay, the mining capitalist of 

 California, in which elegance is sacrificed to 

 massiveness and elaboration. The table ser- 

 vices, in repoutse, laminated, and hammered 

 work after the Japanese manner, were not only 

 graceful in form and ornamentation, but the 

 technical execution was even superior to the 

 Oriental models, and the management of copper 

 niello and gold inlays was admirable. Some of 

 the inlays represented natural flowers in col- 

 ored metal and the natural grain of wood pro- 

 duced by working threads of gold and bronze 

 into the surface of the silver. One vase spe- 

 cially made for the Exposition combined all the 

 new processes in one design: the colored dec- 

 oration of silver, produced by bronze inlays 

 and by colored enamels worked into the ham- 

 mered ground : the laminated grained surface, 

 prodnced by the combination of three metals ; 

 and the decoration of steel with silver work. 

 The jewelry was pretty and novel often, and in 



the setting of precious stones comparable with 

 the best French work. 



The American watch manufacture was rep- 

 resented only by the Waltham Company ; but 

 their display was sufficiently full and represen- 

 tative. The sensation created in Switzerland 

 by the warnings of the expert Edouard Favre- 

 Perret, after the Centennial Exhibition, is still 

 remembered. His fears were well founded. 

 The importation of Swiss watches into the Uni- 

 ted States sank from 370,000 in 1872 to 70,000 

 in 1876 ; while the manufacture of American 

 watches has grown from 15,000 in 1860 to over 

 a quarter of a million annually, and a consid- 

 erable export has sprung up to England, Hol- 

 land, Brazil, and other countries. The Ameri- 

 can watches excel the hand-made article not 

 alone in cheapness, but in the perfect unifor- 

 mity of their parts, allowing of the replacement 

 of any part when injured,in the fineness of the 

 jeweling, in the simplicity of their mechan- 

 ism, and also in the employment of different 

 metals in the same parts, in which the coeffi- 

 cient of contraction and expansion is equalized, 

 and to which the remarkable precision admired 

 by Europeans is greatly due. A number of 

 new inventions and improvements in watch- 

 works were exhibited. 



British Manufactures. The furniture and 

 house decorations in the English section were 

 a prominent and important part of their dis- 

 play. The reform in British taste within ten 

 years has been remarkable in the matter of in- 

 terior fittings. The shapeless weight and big- 

 ness which once characterized their furniture 

 have given place to fashions of neatness and 

 adaptability, which are at once practical and 

 artistic, and which were introduced and her- 

 alded by artists. In the pavilion of the Prince 

 of Wales the choicest of the British exhibits in 

 this line were collected : everything in these 

 rooms was British, all the work by British 

 craftsmen and all the designs by British artists ; 

 even the tapestry on the walls, an imitation of 

 old arras, representing scenes from the " Mer- 

 ry Wives of Windsor," into which 8,000 differ- 

 ent shades of wool were woven, was the prod- 

 uct of a factory in Windsor, established under 

 the Queen's patronage a dozen years ago. The 

 artistic taste and richness of the fittings of this 

 little building, which cost some hundred thou- 

 sand dollars to erect, were much admired by 

 foreign visitors, and were a convincing proof 

 of the great progress lately made in decorative 

 art in England. 



Noteworthy among the exhibits of house dec- 

 oration was a small room fitted up by Misses 

 Rhoda and Agnes Barrett, of London, in which 

 the colors were balanced and combined with 

 rare art and delicacy : the furniture and wood- 

 work were of unpolished rosewood; the up- 

 holstery in a yellow-green pattern on a buff 

 ground ; the floor was partly covered by a yel- 

 low Persian rug ; the curtains were buff em- 

 broidered with yellow and primrose tints, and 

 the wall-hangings of blue-gray stamped velvet ; 



