y
'Make room,' as if a duke were passing by."
SWIFT.

It is an easy remove from the waiter to the tray or vessel on which the
waiters carried the things they served up to those on whom they waited.
The name "salver," commonly applied to a tray or waiter, seems to have
originated from the old custom of tasting meats before they were served,
to salve or save their employers from harm. Among the more valuable are
the trays or waiters of silver and Sheffield plate. Trays made of iron
and japanned after the fashion of Japanese metal lacquer wares, which
towards the close of the eighteenth century were so largely imported
into this country, are often neglected, yet many of them are truly
antiquarian and by no means unlovely.

One of the chief seats of the industry was at Pontypool, but the
business drifted to Birmingham. It was when the japan wares, so called
from the attempt of the makers to copy the lacquers of Japan then much
imported, were being successfully made amidst surroundings then
exceedingly romantic in the little town singularly situated on a steep
cliff overhanging the Avon Llwyd, that dealers found trays,
breadbaskets, snuffer trays, knife trays, caddies, and urns much in
request. In Bishopsgate Street Without, in London, there is a noted wine
house known as the "Dirty Dick." This curious title was derived from the
owner of a famous hardware store who kept it, and was dubbed "Dirty
Dick" because of his untidy shop. The wild disorder of the establishment
gave rise to a popular ballad of which the following are two of the
first lines:--

"A curious hardware shop in general full
Of wares from Birmingham and Pontypool."

In addition to japanned wares there are trays of paper pulp ornamented
with mother-o'-pearl and richly decorated with gold.

The Tea Table.

The modern tea table presents a much less formal array of china and good
things than that of a generation or two back when high tea was an
important function, and the good wife of the household loaded her table
with many substantial dishes. The best china was taken from the
cupboard, and family heirlooms in silver were arrayed on either side of
the teapot. Needless to say the teapot was an indispensable adjunct, and
some of the teapots belonging to the old sets are massive and gorgeous,
rather than beautiful, although the earlier teapots made in this country
in the eighteenth century, a time when tea was