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Glass Letter Cutting

This is the cutting out of glass letters, and includes the selection of the glass, and cutting, bevelling, and polishing. This is the most skilled branch for men and the best paid. The forms of letters are drawn on a sheet of paper; the apprentice has squares of glass which he places over the drawn letters and traces the shapes on to the glass. The form of the letters having been traced on to the surface of the glass, the squares are sent into another department to be gilded by girls; this done, they are returned to be cut into shape by a skilled workman. This part of the work requires great skill and care. The letters when shaped are passed on to men to be smoothed, rouged if necessary, bevelled, and polished. The smoothers, bevellers, and polishers, all sit at tubs containing water, and do their work by dipping the part on which they are working into water and holding it against a revolving wheel.

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For the women entertainers of the old west
Those who entertained women in the absence
Of that dark glass in which so-called whackers
And smoothers of multi-sampled cellulite are
Caught reflecting on four letter bombs despatched
Into the vortices of their fabulous leggings there
Remains a revolving wheel of social ambiguity
Navigated with a dedicated care. For them the
Working life remains one of skilled deportment
Marked by honest submission, cheap amusement
And the paradigmatic sufferance of dominant
Notions of what an entertainment could be
Considered, by their master-clients, to provide.
Devotion, being men-shaped, danced their side

(generated from the first google search result for the phrase 'gilded by girls')