a number of
countries between Turkey and Timbuctoo.

The most important part of the die-sinking trade, is that for making patterns
in brass, mixed metal, and iron in curtain bands, pins, lamp pillars,
cornices, coffin furniture, and all articles in which stamping has superseded
the more expensive process of hammering out.

Within the last twenty years, and notably within the last ten years, public
taste has required an increased amount of ornament in all domestic
manufactures; stimulated by this demand, great improvements have been made in
stamping, and excellence in the art of die-sinking has become more widely
diffused. The Birmingham die-sinkers admit that they are inferior to the
French in design, while in the execution of cutting heavy steel dies, they
are decidedly superior. Die-sinking is an art, like painting or sculpture,
which requires personal aptitude to enable an apprentice to acquire
excellence.

It is carried on in Birmingham by men who work themselves, employing two or
three journeymen. The names of these artists seldom appear. A London or
Parisian tradesman undertakes an order which is passed to some noted
Birmingham House, which transmits it to a hard-handed man in a back street.

* * * * *

COFFIN ORNAMENTS.--The manufacture of ornaments for coffins is a very
important part of the trade, and it is curious to find, that even in this
last concession to human vanity, there is a constant demand for new designs.

Who is it that examines and compares the ornaments of one coffin with that of
another? We never heard of the survivors of a deceased examining an
undertaker's patterns. And yet, a house which consumes forty tons of cast
iron per annum for coffin handles, stated to the gentleman to whose letters
we are indebted for this information, "Our travellers find it useless to show
themselves with their pattern books at an undertaker's, unless they have
something tasteful, new, and uncommon. The orders for Ireland are chiefly
for gilt furniture for coffins. The Scotch, also, are fond of gilt, and so
are the people in the west of England. But the taste of the English is
decidedly for black. The Welsh like a mixture of black and white. Coffin
lace is formed of very light stamped metal, and is made of almost as many
patterns as the ribbons of Coventry. All our designs are registered, as
there is a constant piracy going on, which it is necessary to check."

Dies are cut in soft metal and then h