Page:Embroidery and Fancy Work.djvu/144

140 soft, a groove can be cut on the inside about a quarter or half an inch from the bottom. Into this fit a circular piece of metal or horn. A little ingenuity will enable one to fit on brass mountings at top and bottom. These mountings can be rendered still further ornamental by either chasing or repoussée work. In their original shape or slightly flattened horns, can be ornamented in various ways, and utilized for holding flowers, grasses, or made into bonbonnières, or simply hang up as ornaments. To polish them, they should be rubbed with fine sand and emery paper, then with whiting, and finished off with a little sweet oil on a piece of chamois, or with a little sub-nitrate of bismuth, rubbed in with the hand.

The horns, thus polished, can be either etched on, which is done by coating them with wax, scratching out the design, and then pouring acid and water over the whole or they can have designs painted on them in oil colors, or they can be decorated with ink or stain of no appropriate color. In the latter case, the design should be cut lightly in the horn with a very small V tool, and the groove thus made filled with ink or stain by means of a camel's hair brush.

Prepared for powder flasks they would add an important item to the woefully short list of presents really useful and appropriate for gentlemen. A wooden plate should be fastened into the bottom of the horn, and a stopper more or less ornamental to the upper end, which would have to be sawed off a short distance from the tip. A worker in metals could doubtless fasten on one of the patent tops now generally used on powder flasks. A string should be fastened to either end sufficiently long to permit of the flask being worn suspended over the shoulder. Either simply polished or ornamented with some of the ancient Celtic or those designs to be found in books on antiquities, this would form a charming gift.