of Japanning: Varnishing, Pollishing, and Gilding ... Published at the Request of Several Ladies of Distinction by Mrs. Artlove (1730), The Lady's Delight, or Accomplished Female Instructor (1741), Study and Practise the Noble and Commendable Art of Drawing, Colouring and Japanning ... with Plain and Easy Rules for the Ladies Japanning (1751), The Ladies Amusement or, Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy (1758, 1762 & 1771), & The Young Ladies School of Art by Hannah Robertson (1766) were all aimed at a female audience, and some of which were also written by female authors. Certainly by 1710, "japanning" was regarded by many including Alexander Pope as a feminine pastime. These mock lacquerware techniques were often suggested to be applied to textiles, and by the 18th century are found on cabinets, tea-trays, powderboxes, drawers, and large flat English household furniture in the manors and houses of the landed gentry. Drawing on the grotesque forms derived from travellers accounts and artwork from the Indies these conflated forms went so far from the source material, they can said to be an early form of Japonaiserie in the UK. Popular motifs included landscapes containing 'woods, cottages, rivers, trees, hills, sun, moon [&] stars'. Other popular adopters included the wife of Robert Walpole, Lady Catherine Walpole in 1732. One of her 'japanned cabinets' was bought and displayed in the Blue bedroom by Horace Walpole in his Strawberry Hill House. The popularity of japanning continued to be seen as a womanly pursuit until 1760, by which point it began to become a commercial trade in the UK. Today, japanning exists primarily as a conservation craft – it so extremely rare to make it for new items so it is taught from a conservation/restoration approach for example as part of the City & Guilds three-year Conservation course and Painter Stainers Decorative Surface Fellowship. Wolverhampton and Bilston Wolverhampton and Bilston were important centres for the manufacture of japanned ware. Trade directories for 1818 list 20 firms of japanners in Wolverhampton and 15 in Bilston. According to Samuel Timmins' book Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District, published in 1866, there were 2000 people employed in the japanning and tin-plate industries in Wolverhampton and Bilston at the time. Japanning firms ranged in size from small family workshops, which often adjoined the proprietor's home, to a few large factories employing over 250 people. In the larger workshops, the production of tin