Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/661

 Popular Science Monthly

��Make Soldiers' Waistcoats Out of Your Old Kid Gloves

PATRIOTIC women in America may profit by the experience of their Brit- ish cousins and follow their example, by devoting their attention to the making of "glove waistcoats" instead of the sweaters which their nimble fingers have been knit- ting heretofore for

��the soldiers and sailors of our coun- try. These vests are made of waste material, discarded kid gloves, which cost practically nothing. The lin- ing costs only thirty-five cents. One of these vests can easily be made in a day or two, while the knitting of a sweater takes considerably more time. Another advantage of the glove vests is that they weigh but a few ounces, are less bulky than woolen sweaters, yet fully as warm and more windproof. In addition to that they do not shelter vermin as do the knitted garments. It is to be hoped that American women will see the advantages in this new patriotic work.

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Emmanuel, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Count Cavour and are the work of Jacopo Fran- chini, a skillful glassworker in Murano, near Venice, Italy, who lived in the early part of the nineteenth century and worked so hard at his strange craft that he died in a madhouse.

The National Museum in Washington has recently acquired a fine collection of marvelous glass-

��This light, warm, windproof waistcoat is made from old kid gloves at small cost

��The Smallest Portraits in the World

WHAT is believed to be the smallest group of portraits in the world, is exhibited in the National Mu- seum in Washing- ton. The portraits are arranged in the form of a cloverleaf and are enclosed in a circular frame about one-eighth of an inch in diameter. They

represent King Victor

���Small object between finger and thumb and how it appears enlarged

��work made by Franchini and placed it on ex- hibition.

The portraits are of glass and really represent a cross section of a mosaic rod of glass. Franchini's method of making these miniature portraits was highly ingenious. He began by mak- ing a mosaic of the three portraits, each in its indi- vidual frame and the whole set in a common circular frame. The mo- saic was formed of sticks of solid glass of the desired color. After the mosaic was completed, the cylindrical composite rod was welded by heat and then drawn out. As the rod was drawn out it dimin- ished in diameter and the diameter of the individual sticks of colored glass of which it was composed dimin- ished in proportion. As the drawing out was done carefully, the particles of the sticks forming the mosaic remained in their relative positions, or nearly so. A slight distortion could not be avoided, as may be noticed in our reproduction of the portraits greatly mag- nified. Nevertheless, the results obtained were extraordinary.

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