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                              OPEN DOOR
STANDARD            Frederick Warne & Company, of New York announce a
new
ART                 and important art publication, "The National Gallery"
(Lon-
PUBLICATIONS don) containing fifty-seven ftill plate photogravures and one
hundred and fifty-five smaller half-tone pictures with the text descriptive
of this famous
collection as it exists to-day by Gustav Geffroy, with an interesting historical
introduc-
tion by Sir Walter Armstrong.
     Two new volumes have been added this season to the Newnes Art Library,-
Puvis de Chavannes, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Art students and lovers of painting
will
find this a very comprehensive series and a prospectus of the list of volumes
already
issued will be sent upon application.
TIN ROOFING           Continuing the story, at first hands, about the Taylor
"Old
FACTS WORTH Style" Roofing Tin, we quote from the manufacturer's statement
KNOWING             to us some of the essential points which it is well for
home-build-
                    ers to know: "We are the only manufacturers still
making tin
in the old-fashioned hand labor way-a fact which we are always glad to demonstrate
by a visit to our works and a comparison with the methods used by others.
This
method calls for no less than four dippings into pots of metal at various
temperatures
so as to pile on the maximum amount of coating; and the sheets are allowed
to soak in
the various vats and the coating is brushed in by the tin men and their assistants,
so
that the entire process of coating a sheet takes thirty-five minutes.
     "Some idea of the vast difference between this thorough, careful
process and the
modern machine method can be gained from the fact that a well mottled, extra-coated
terne can be finished through one of these tinning machines in eight seconds.
A man
and a boy-both unskilled-are employed at each of these patent machines, whereas
no less than six persons handle the plates at our 'Old Style' stacks.
     "Our tin carries a heavier coating than other brands on the market-a
fact which
can usually be determined by simply scraping the sheet with a sharp knife.
Place a
sheet of any other roofing-tin beside a sheet of 'Old Style' and the difference
in the coat-
ings will be apparent. Note the heavy, rough natural coating on our 'Old
Styie'
brand-not smoothed off, or artificially mottled, by means of rolls-but simply
the
heavy, durable tin coating put on slowly and thoroughly by skilled hand labor.
     "The weight of the coating alone, however, does not indicate the
lasting value of
the tin. A sixty-pound coarse, lead-coated plate will not give the durability
of, say
a forty-five pound coating of a rich alloy of tin and lead. Tin costs about
seven
times as much as lead, and a rich coating carrying a high percentage of tin
runs up the
cost of the plate. Neither pure tin nor pure lead seems to give the best
results for a
roofing plate; and long experience in tin-plate manufacture-more than seventy
years-
has demonstrated to us the proper alloy necessary to secure the best results."
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