The use of leather can be made much more general than is supposed by the many who recall picture-frames in country houses, covered thickly with impossible flowers, and who think"leather-work"only another word for wasted time. As a fact, however, the industrial art schools have all taken it up, finding that leather lends itself to many uses, and that really beautiful articles can be modelled or constructed from it.

Where flowers or leaves are copied, it is necessary to imitate nature as closely as possible; and the leaf or flower should be before one precisely as much as when a drawing is to be made. Carvings of every sort can also be copied, and architectural mouldings also; and the work is one of the pleasantest introductions to wood-carving.

The materials necessary for the work are skins of thick leather, prepared for it, called basil, and of thinner leather, called skiver; moulds for making grapes and convolvulus-flowers; wooden pestles and moulding-tools; a knife, scissors, nippers, hammer, pins, wire, small brad-awls for piercing, a tool for veining the leaves, and glue, which is generally prepared in sheets, to be melted as required. It must be soaked for several hours in cold water, and then gradually heated, and kept hot while in use.

The leather is cut and veined on a thin board.