f tea, according to a note by Dr. Strong,
who visited the barracks at Norman Cross.

The workboxes, so rich in gilding and relief, came from Italy, when, as
early as the year 1400, caskets were covered with a species of lime
which was moulded, the gesso, as it was called, on a gilt ground of
white compo, giving it a very rich effect. Leather was used with good
effect, too, for the ornamentation of workboxes, red morocco being much
favoured in England early in the nineteenth century. Fig. 76 illustrates
three very beautiful little fitted boxes with inlaid ornament and straw
work.

Little Accessories.

The contents of an old workbox are many and varied. Among the odds and
ends it is no uncommon thing to find relics of lace-making, by which so
many cottagers have been able to maintain themselves for generations.

[Illustration: FIG. 73.--SPINNING WHEEL.

(_In the Hull Museum._)]

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--OLD LACE BOBBINS.

(_a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, and _f_, reading from left to right.)]

There is something very remarkable about the manufacture of pillow lace,
in that it is carried on in the villages of Buckinghamshire just as it
was two or more centuries ago, and the pillow and the bobbins are almost
identical in form and design--indeed, the patterns of the lace have
changed little, for the workers cling tenaciously to the old designs,
Flemish in their characteristics, just as they do to the old bobbins.

Some of these little spools or bobbins have been handed down from mother
to daughter as heirlooms, and many of them carry a romantic story, if it
were but known. Just as the Welsh lovespoons and the Sunderland glass
rolling-pins were given as love tokens, many of these bobbins are the
result of patient labour, their decoration having often been the work of
days; ivory, bone, wood, and metal being cut and shaped, gilded and
stained, in order to provide the favoured one with a bobbin unlike any
other and quite distinctive in design. In the making of pillow lace,
pins, cleverly placed so as to form the pattern, were inserted into the
cushion, and the threads on a dozen or more bobbins deftly twisted in
and out and tied round the pins. The glass beads, many of the older ones
of odd shapes and colours, hand-made, made the first distinction, and
their weight helped to keep the light turned wood bobbins in place. It
was the bobbins which were ornamental, and some of the older ones--those
made in the eighteenth centur