Beaten Metal-Work 
know what the public want and serve the pub¬ 
lic accordingly. It is to the individual artist 
and craftsman that all credit is due. H e has 
worked alone, and endeavored to produce 
only the best, and he is demonstrating that the 
best is none too good for the public demand. 
One of the men who is doing pioneer 
work along these lines is Mr. Laurin H. 
Martin, of Boston. He received his training 
in the best schools in England, and is to-day 
one ol the few teachers of beaten metal-work 
in America. He realizes fully the possi¬ 
bilities and the limitations of his medium 
and he combines excellent workmanship 
with a true sense of form and design. The 
book cover shown in the illustration is a 
piece of his repousse work. The leaf border 
is almost realistic in execution while the 
saints are quite conventional. In no place 
does his skill as a workman show more 
clearly than in the execution of the letters 
on the front and back covers. The brass 
and copper bowls illustrated on page 577 are 
fair examples of his sense of form, as well 
as of his skilful workmanship. These bowls 
are in one piece, being beaten up from a flat 
sheet, and are examples of one of the most 
difficult processes in hammered metal. 
The general method of raising a bowl or 
making any hollow vessel is comparatively 
simple, but the practical execution requires 
great skill acquired only by long practice. 
Many of the old pieces seen in the shops 
are made of two pieces of metal, as is easily 
discovered by looking for the line of brazing 
down one side of the bowl. This shows 
that the body has been made by joining the 
two edges ot a sheet of metal, thus forming 
a tube. This brazed joint is very strong 
and permits of the bowl’s being shaped by 
blows from the inside, or by beating on the 
outside while it is stretched and shaped over 
a core or form. The second piece is the 
bottom. T his is joined either by turni ng it 
like a hem or by brazing. Hollow forms 
beaten out of one piece or “raised from the 
GERMAN KETTLE AND PLATEAU 
oj Brass Repousse 
5 74 
