Among the branches of the brass trade which have become important, since the increase of emigration about 5000 ship lamps have been made in one year, at a cheap rate; and within the last five years brass egg cups have been sent in enormous numbers to Turkey, where they are used to hand round coffee.  South America is a great mart for cheap brass ware.

Of this trade, it may be said, in the words of a vulgar proverb, “as one door shuts another opens.”

The use of china and glass, in conjunction with brass for house furniture and chandeliers, has also created a variety, and afforded an advantageous impetus to the trade.

Mr. Winfield is one of the manufacturers in brass whose showrooms are open to the public.  He also has claims on our attention for the wise and philanthropic manner in which he has endeavoured to supply the lamentable deficiency of education among the working classes.

He holds a very leading position as a manufacturer of balustrades, tables, window-cornices, candelabra chandeliers, brackets, curtain-bands, and above all of metal bedsteads, which last he has supplied to some of the chief royal and princely families of Europe, besides Spain, Algeria, and the United States.  In all these works great attention has been paid to design as well as workmanship, as was amply proved both at the local exhibition in 1849, where a large gas bracket, in the Italian style, of brass, with Parisian ornaments, excited much admiration; and in 1851, in Hyde Park, where we especially noted an ormolu cradle and French bedstead in gilt and bronze, amid a number of capital works of his production.

Mr. Winfield is patentee of a curious process for drawing out the cylinders used in making bedsteads.

Messrs. Messengers and Sons have one of the finest manufactories in ornamental iron, brass, and bronze, for lamps, chandeliers, and table ornaments.  For a long series of years they have spared no expense in obtaining the best models and educating their workmen in drawing and modelling.  In their show-rooms will be found many very pleasing statues in gold-colour, in bronze, and copies from antique types of vases, lamps, candelabra, etc.

Messrs. Salt and Lloyd are also eminent lamp makers, and generally exhibit, beside table-lamps, the last and best carriage-lamps.

Messrs. Ratcliffes are another enterprising firm.

All such of these manufactories as have show-rooms open to strangers, will be found by an inquiry at any hotel; for although Birmingham is a large town, everybody knows everybody, and the cab drivers will usually be found competent to guide through the voyage of investigation.

Next, after brass, we will take steel, divided into heavy and light steel toys.

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Heavy steel toys.—­Heavy steel toys are the name by which, by a sort of Brummagem Bull, a variety of articles which are the very reverse of toys, and which are often not made of steel at all, are designated.  Heavy steel toys are tools or articles of an implement nature, used in domestic economy.