Word: brasswork
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...finest navy the world had ever known, and its splendor was never more stirringly displayed. The year was 1897, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and the Royal Navy assembled at Spithead, off Portsmouth, for review. Decks scrubbed white, brasswork gleaming, wheelhouse glass sparkling, the ships stretched along the coast in four lines seven miles long. There were 173 in all, including more than 50 battleships. At the same time, 160 other units of the Queen's Grand Fleet were on patrol in every sea in the world...
Wheatland's problem is a common one among instrument collectors. Sundials, astrolabes, globes, telescopes, and microscopes are old favorites with antique buyers who admire the shiny brasswork, wax the basswood, and wonder what the gorgeous object was ever used for. While the stiff bidding of these amateur antiquaries has made much of Harvard's collection too valuable to risk exhibiting, their uneducated enthusiasm has depressed its worth in the marketplace of ideas. It is scarcely surprising, with more interior decorators than scientists in the field, that scientific artifacts do not attract any significant number of scrupulous scholars. --From an account...
...tunghsi, or curio salesmen, find business rough. Their bronzes, brasswork and jade figurines bring only a quarter of the price they commanded last winter. One tunghsi man reminisces mournfully: "The mandarin coats-ah! We used to sell them for $20 apiece. When we ran out of real ones we went to the undertakers and bought up their supply of secondhand burial clothes. The burial clothes were even more ornate, and the Americans were twice as happy...
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