industry is dead. Is it ? Take the artistic work
of the black- smith. Since the revival four years ago, in which Kent and Hertfordshire took the lead, there is a record of sales to the aggregate value of £2,000 within one inconsiderable area. At a recent show at Hatfield visitors from many parts admired the artistic skill of the blacksmith and some gave him orders. The total sum is not great, but it does not include a very great deal of work sold in the villages, and the signs of a revived interest in real craftsman's hammered work, as contrasted with machine made and filed metal, are beyond all question. We all witnessed a very remarkable revival in the art of Norfolk thatching, and as aesthetic taste grows we may expect to find a greater respect for all sorts of hand-made work in many directions—in furniture (witness the delightful elm-plank garden furniture now in vogue), in basket work, in saddlery, in hand-weaving and in ironmongery.
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