FISH SCALES.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18015, 6 March 1924, Page 2

FISH SCALES.

A NOVEL CRAFT. (rUCit 01*3 OYTO COBBESPOKDEXT.) SYDNEY, February 28. Infinite in their number, boundless in their diversity, are the occupations open to one. Of the queer arts and handicrafts to which women devote themselves perhaps the strangest and not least beautiful has just come to light. A woman in Sydney some time ago ->va s gazing at some fish scales, not with the hard, domestic eye of the housekeeper, but with thT> eye and the delicate sense of an artist. She thought they were so pretty, glimmering and shimmering in the sunlight in their opalescent hues, that they were simply asking to be made into something beautiful instead of being thrown out into the rubbish tip. To-dav, she is engaged in the profitable and beautiful occupation of making butterflies of delicate beauty, and lovely roses, pre-eminent among the reigning beauties of the garden, out of the scale's of fish. In her little studio, in her own home, she cleans and prepares the scales, sorts cut the different sizes and tints, and selects them according to their size, colour, and form, for the things which appeal to her fancy. Thus is evolved, for instance, a lovely buttcr/ly, with the markings on the wings impressed in lightly-penned lines of black; or a rose, or other fish-scales flowers, hand-painted. Specimen?, of this unique and dainty work, which has its possibilities for any woman with a sense of the beautiful, are at present attracting much attention at the showroom of the Women's Handicrafts Association in Sydney. The high priest of anglers, old Izaak Walton, never dreamt of this by-product of angling when ho induced his fellow-men to become piscatory assassins, squatting or standing for hours, like patience oil a monument, waiting for something to bite. I