Harness Brass Every country town has at least one antique
shop that sells bits of brass that people are pleased to call horse brast. These days it hardly matters that ninety-nine per cent. of the stuff never saw a saddler's shop, let alone a horse. Produce enough styles and designs of a thing and someone will begin a collection, and the makers of these things are not slow to take advantage of the fact. Harness brass—I like this name for it better—was a grand sight on the foreheads and collars and blinkers of a pair of well-groomed horses. The ploughman had little time for polishing it in the ordinary way, but when it came to a show, the harness was dressed and the brass made bright. The patterns were many, whorls and points that would have looked well on a war horse, studs and wheels, emblems that were traditional decorations put on by the saddler. Most of it went into the rubbish heap when old harness was scrapped. In the antique shops one can tell the genuine from the imitation not only by the price on a piece, but by the strength of the design itself. The people who buy the spurious harness brass want a bright nick-nack, not a relic of the passing horse age.
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