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Old Bouchereau especially looked askance at the inventor of the Jenkins Pearls. At last, when they had thoroughly examined and questioned their patient, they withdrew for deliberation to a small salon, all in lacquer-work, with gleaming highly-colored walls and ceiling, filled with an assortment of pretty trifles, whose uselessness contrasted strangely with the importance of the discussion.
The pineapples of Simojovel were to his liking; they are sugar-sweet, leaving no prickly sensation, and anyone can eat three whole ones at a sitting. After luncheon, we looked about for examples of lacquer-work. In one house, we found some small objects and wooden trays of indifferent workmanship. An old crone, badly affected with pinto, the mother of the young woman artist, showed us the wares.
In the sombre light she stumbled against a screen covered with paper painted to look like lacquer-work, and, as the slip-shod old nurse in her serre-tête motioned her forward, she had a dismal sense of a lodging-house interior, a bourgeois barrenness enhanced by two engravings after Léopold Robert, depressingly alien from that dainty boudoir atmosphere of the artist-life she knew.
We started out over the hot and dusty road, passing here and there through cuts of the white earth, which is used by the women of Chiapa in their lacquer-work. We soon reached the river, and, leaving our animals behind, to cool before swimming them across, embarked with a dozen other passengers, and all our baggage, in one of the great canoes, which we by no means filled.
I had no idea that you were interested in them. That third one is exquisite. And what a dado!" "Hewlings himself designed it for me," Mr. Waddington observed, with satisfaction. "There are several things I should like you to notice, Burton. That lacquer-work box!" Burton was already holding it in his fingers and was gazing at it lovingly. "It is perfect," he admitted. "What workmanship!
Again, an old man passes, guided by a little boy, who is proud to assist his grandfather; for respect for the aged, no less than love for their children, is a dominant trait in the character of the Burman. In sheds made for the purpose oil or sugar mills are being turned by bullocks, while in some few villages is made that pretty red and gold lacquer-work we know so well in England.
There was a large writing-table of lacquer-work, on which stood a movable electric lamp without a shade, in the midst of a rummage of pamphlets and papers. Near it were a coffee-table and two deep arm-chairs. From the ceiling, which was divided into compartments painted in dark red and blue, hung a heavy lamp by a chain of gilded silver. A stick of incense burned in a gilded holder.
She had a big fan in her hand; but when she saw the visitor she went up to a beautiful little, low table, with an ivory frill round it, where stood some dainty, delicate tea-cups and saucers. Into one of these she put a little ball, about as big as an oak-apple, of tea-leaves; a maid dressed like herself poured hot water on it, and handed it on a lacquer-work tray.
The studio in which they stood was littered with things strange to him; an easel, bearing a half-finished drawing; a black-polished cabinet; a table-desk against the window, on it slips of paper thrown carelessly about, the ink-well open, a file full of letters, a handful of cigarettes, a tray of tobacco ash, a bespattered palette, pens, coloured crayons, a medley of things; a revolving office chair with a worn crimson footrug before it; a many-shelved glass case against the blank wall, crammed to overflowing with shells and coral and strange grasses, with specimens of ore, with Chinese carvings, with curious lacquer-work; a large brass-bound portfolio stand; on the painted walls plaster-casts of hands and arms and feet, boxing gloves, fencing foils, a glaring tiger's head, a group of photographs; in the corner, a suit of antique armour stood sentinel over a heap of dumb-bells and Indian clubs.
There are many entirely for the sale of Western things, and others for the things of the country the beautiful embroideries and silks, and silver-work and lacquer-work and carving, which you know so well by sight at home, for it is sent over in large quantities now, and anyone can buy it in London as cheaply as here.
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