Antique Self Portrait Rubens by F. Flor for Flor & Findel 19th C

Florentine Crafts
During the Renaissance, Florence was renowned throughout Europe as a centre of fine art, particularly in painting, gold gilding, bronze work, and furnishings inlaid with intricate designs in marble or rare wood. The fine craft traditions associated with some of these arts never entirely died out in Florence, and remained well-established up to the 19th century. Florence's craft guilds were a crucial force behind the survival of these trades.
In an effort to boost Florence's economy, and promote its crafts to tourists, a museum of decorative arts opened in the Bargello in 1865. This, in combination with Florence's reputation in fine arts, led to rapid growth in the demand for craft products among tourists, particularly from England. Victorian tourists found many craft shops listed in the back of guide books, such as John Murray's Florence and its Environs.
Florentine style crafts have an ornate appearance, and are typically gold gilded.  Decoupage usually includes reproductions of well-known Classical Florentine art works, which may or may not be religious in nature.
Although the reproductions are in many cases a derivative style imitating fine art and fine objects made of rare materials, Florentine crafts aimed at tourists were fashionable, and termed bon gusto, or fine taste, "pure Italian" or "pure Renaissance style". Florentine hand carved gold-gilt frames in particular became popular during the late Victorian era; references to such ornate frames appear in period literature, such as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Florentine-style crafts remain collectable today. Florentine frames and plaques, and reproduction Florentine furniture, are associated with the Shabby chic style of interior decorating in particular in recent years.
 

Lapis lazuli, or lapis for short, is a deep blue matamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color. As early as the 7th millennium BCE, lapis lazuli was mined in the Sar-i Sang mines, in Shortugai, and in other mines in Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan. Lapis was highly valued by the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300–1900 BC). Lapis beads have been found at Neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and even as far from Afghanistan as Mauritania. It was used in the funeral mask of Tutankhamum (1341–1323 BCE).

At the end of the Middle Ages, lapis lazuli began to be exported to Europe, where it was ground into powder and made into ultramarine, the finest and most expensive of all blue pigments. It was used by some of the most important artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, including Masaccio, Perugino, Titian and Vermeer, and was often reserved for the clothing of the central figures of their paintings, especially the Virgin Mary.

Lapis takes an excellent polish and can be made into jewelry, carvings, boxes, mosaics, ornaments, small statues, and vases. During the Renaissance, Lapis was ground and processed to make the pigment ultramarine for use in frescoes and oil paintings. Its usage as a pigment in oil paint largely ended in the early 19th century when a chemically identical synthetic variety became available.