"Decorative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'Don't! It makes me want to get out there again. What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret and brick-red and sulphur—cockatoo-crest—sulphur—against brown, with a nigger-black rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative frieze of camels festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise sky.' He began to walk up and down. 'And yet, you know, if you try to give these people the thing as God gave it, keyed down to their comprehension and according to the powers He has ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Scotswoman—odd and whimsical, perhaps, but rich, very rich and influential. My clergy, however, have enough to do with the various departments of our church work. For instance, there is the Ladies' Society, the Fancy Needlework classes, and the Decorative Flower Guild, not to speak of the daughter churches and the ministration in hospitals, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Extracts from the Christian Fathers. With Decorative Title-page and Photogravure Frontispiece. 32mo, cloth extra, each 1s. nett; leather, each 1s. 6d. nett. Also Three Volumes in leather in case, 4s. 6d. nett. Also bound in white vellum with gilt edges, each volume in a box, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... came and went, growing older and more characteristic, more and more "Beauty Steele," accompanied by legends of wild deeds and days at college, by tales of his fopperies and the fashions he had set, she herself had grown, as he had termed it, more "decorative." He had told her so, not in the least patronisingly, but as a simple fact in which no sentiment lurked. He thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, but he had never regarded her save as a creation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And if any one has read Zola's description of the workman's marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the museums ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Fourth Edition, together with accurate notes, a biography of both Omar and Fitzgerald, and a Poetical Tribute by Andrew Lang. Beautifully printed in two colors on old Chester deckle edge paper, with decorative borders by Charles D. Farrand, fourteen half-tone illustrations by Gilbert James, and a portrait of Fitzgerald. In every way a superior edition at a moderate price. Gilt tops, attractively bound in cloth and gold, Size 5-1/4 ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... intensifying his own personality, and producing his own individual work. At first none came to him. That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not change him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He is an incomparable novelist. With the decorative arts it is not different. The public clung with really pathetic tenacity to what I believe were the direct traditions of the Great Exhibition of international vulgarity, traditions that were so appalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind people to live in. ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... astounding picture. It rose in the midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light, purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. How wonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upon a miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of red glass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glass arches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From the pillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... masonry did not apparently improve in proportion, Far View House shows increase in the number and variety of the decorative figures incised on hewn stones. The spiral, representing the coiled serpent, appears a number of times, as do many combinations of squares, curves, and angles arranged in fanciful design, which may or may ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... North American Indian. The Oraon is particular about his personal appearance only so long as he is unmarried, but he is in no hurry to withdraw from the Dhumkuria community, and generally his first youth is passed before he resigns his decorative propensities. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... few shell ornaments have been noted in the archaeology of Baja California. No specimens identical to those from Bahia de Los Angeles are known; however, all of the decorative elements and techniques recorded here can be duplicated among specimens of oyster (Pinctada mazatlanica) shell ornaments from the Cape Region far to the south (Massey, MS 1). Since abalone do not occur in the Gulf of California, these shells must have been obtained by the Bahia de Los Angeles ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... With decorative cover, frontispiece, title page in color, and ornamental head and tail pieces. Cloth. 12mo; 5-1/8 ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a social weakness," asked Glady, "to have chosen as witnesses of this act of reparation persons who seem to have been selected for the decorative side ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... perhaps more essential to them than to the wealthy and leisurely who had previously monopolised it. The multiplication of Schools of Design over the country, intended to promote the tasteful efficiency of those engaged in textile manufactures and in our decorative and constructive art generally, is one remarkable feature of the time, and the sedulous cultivation of music by members of all classes of society is another, hardly less hopeful. In all these efforts for the benefit and elevation of the community the Prince Consort took deep and active interest, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... something was wanted for the sake of the plot, but he did not care about it or was hurried. The conception of the passage is then distinct from the execution, and neither is inspired. This is so also, I think, wherever we can truly speak of merely decorative effect. We seem to perceive that the poet had a truth or fact—philosophical, agricultural, social—distinctly before him, and then, as we say, clothed it in metrical and coloured language. Most argumentative, didactic, or ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... all reluctant to see her daughter and this young man amiably conversing. Mr. Nelson had something not unlike the carriage and tone of a gentleman; he talked quietly, though light-heartedly, and from remarks he let fall it appeared that he was somehow connected with the decorative arts. Minnie and he dropped into a discussion of some new ceramic design put forth by Doulton's; they seemed to understand each other, and grew more animated as they exchanged opinions. The hostess, meanwhile, kept glancing at them ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... more eccentric. We were proceeding along Holborn when his attention was suddenly arrested by the window of a furniture shop, in which was displayed a collection of obsolete French small-arms—relics of the tragedy of 1870—which were being sold for decorative purposes. After a brief inspection, he entered the shop, and shortly reappeared carrying a long sword-bayonet and ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... neighbors. According to your creed each of us has enough of his own derelictions to answer for, without going abroad for things to repent. As for religion, I suppose girls who do Kensington work will use it for decorative purposes for some time to come, but thinking people long ago outgrew such folly. In regard to my friends, it is all a question of standards, as I've said no end of times. From my point of view they are very sensible people, and you a little bigot. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... realm. Besides those of the larger mammals, such as bear and moose and caribou, she saw the tracks of those two savage hunters, the wolverine and lynx. The latter is nothing more nor less than an overgrown tomcat, except for a decorative tuft at his ears, and like all his brethren soft as flower petals in his step; but because he mews unpleasantly on the trail he has a worse reputation than he deserves. But not so with the wolverine. Many unkind remarks ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... flat so charmingly furnished with carpets and decorative furniture that Liszt himself was surprised into admiration as he entered my 'petite elegance', as he called it. Now for the first time I enjoyed the delight of getting to know my friend better as a fellow-composer. In addition to many of his celebrated pianoforte pieces, which he had only recently ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the general esteem in which people should be held who patronized local industries, in his thick German-English, grinned, and shambled back, his fat hips shaking like a woman's, to his hot-houses, and pottered around his geraniums and decorative palms. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pictorial matters. Henry Irving had had little training in such matters—I had had a great deal. Judgment about colors, clothes and lighting must be trained. I had learned from Mr. Watts, from Mr. Godwin, and from other artists, until a sense of decorative effect had become ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... you try to get three skins off one ox. Excuse me, I speak disconnectedly, but that doesn't matter. You don't look upon the simple people as human beings. And even the princes, counts, and bishops who used to come and see you, you looked upon simply as decorative figures, not as living beings. But the worst of all, the thing that most revolts me, is having a fortune of over a million and doing nothing for ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... is the doing of this delicately in degree, and broadly in mass; in color it may be done much more decisively than in light and shade, and, according to the simplicity of the work, with greater frankness of confession, until, in purely decorative art, as in the illumination, glass-painting, and heraldry of the great periods, we find it reduced to segmental accuracy. Its greatest masters, in high art, are Tintoret, Veronese, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the Germans were the great brickmakers of Europe during the middle ages, although the Italians, from the 14th to the 15th century, revived and developed the art of decorative brick-work or terra-cotta, and discovered the method of applying coloured enamels to these materials. Under the Della Robbias, in the 15th century, some of the finest work of this class that the world has seen was executed, but it can scarcely be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... sun drew another blaze from the free-bosomed earth. Whereupon a neighbour's little girl, at the behest of her mother, duly craved and received permission from Bess to gather a few poppies for decorative purposes. But of this I was uninformed, and when I descried her in the midst of the field I waved my arms like a ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... broad shoulders and a not yet expanded waist. His nose and chin were clearly and strongly cut, his eyes brightly blue; his moustache ran to decisive little points twisted up from the lip and was as decorative as an epaulette upon a martial shoulder. Pleasantness radiated from him, and though, with years, this pleasantness was significant rather of his general attitude than of his individual interest, though his movements ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in a large building on Fifth Avenue in the new shopping district, where hundreds of thousands of women passed almost daily. He called the place a Dermatological Institute, but, as Hampton put it, he practised "decorative surgery." ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... How decorative is the form of woman, and her grace! O nature, wherein the painter's poetic fancies wander! O landscape! O stage fit for a desirable life! a helpful land, gallant woods, meadows full of music, groves propitious to the sports of Echo! cradling trees hung with baskets ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... of Guinevere," this song of the moon and the roses was published in 1858. Probably the little book won no attention; it is not popular even now. Yet the lyrics remain in memories which forget all but a general impression of the vast "Earthly Paradise," that huge decorative poem, in which slim maidens and green-clad men, and waters wan, and flowering apple trees, and rich palaces are all mingled as on some long ancient tapestry, shaken a little by the wind of death. They are not living and ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... obtained. Thus, by walking about his room, Mr. Markham can look with level eyes for the book he wants, and procure it without recourse to a chair or stepladder. This plan of banking books also lends itself to a decorative arrangement of them. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... have been mystified by the cloverleaf-like symbol that appears on the feature key. Its oldest name is 'cross of St. Hannes', but it occurs in pre-Christian Viking art as a decorative motif. Throughout Scandinavia today the road agencies use it to mark sites of historical interest. Apple picked up the symbol from an early Mac developer who happened to be Swedish. Apple documentation ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of Puntal at his back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned in ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the secret. It is in such works that his influence will be felt the longest; for, as with his master, the great pictures in which he exemplified his principles remain cold and uninteresting. The "Homer Deified," reproduced here, was originally intended as a ceiling for the Louvre, and from a decorative point of view would excite a pitying smile from Veronese or Tiepolo. Taken bit by bit, as a beautiful exhibition of supreme knowledge, of the evasive quality of style in drawing, it is, however, admirable, and as a whole it has the merits of grave, balanced composition. It was the spirit of ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... return in labour whatever. In a little while the mere absence of occupation for so great a multitude of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... welcome anywhere," Zara, the sculptress, said. "They're always glad to entertain a singer, and for people who do the fine decorative work they do, they're the most incompetent practical mechanics I've ever seen or heard of. You're going to travel from village ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... oxidized silver lamps of Roman design, and there are frequent illuminated texts from the Bible and from Mrs. Eddy's SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES impaneled. A sunburst in the centre of the ceiling takes the place of chandeliers. There is a disc of cut glass in decorative designs covering 144 electric lights in the form of a star, which is twenty-one inches from point to point, the centre being of pure white light, and each ray under prisms which reflect the rainbow tints. The galleries are richly paneled in relief work. The organ and ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... pockets,—in those days, the only excursion-boats that rocked upon the ground-swell over the pale, sandy reaches of the Fishing-Banks were the tiny barklets that shot out on calm days from the sweeping coves, with their tawny tarred-and-feathered crews: for of such grotesque result of the decorative art of Lynch doth ever remind me the noble Indian warrior in his plumes and paint. Unfitted, by the circumscribed character of their sea-craft, their tackle, and their skill, for pushing their enterprise out into the deeper water, where the shark might haply say to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... expression of a novel, individual, and refreshing point of view. Mr. Jerome alone among American politicians has made a specialty of plain speaking. He has revolted against the tradition in our politics which seeks to stop every leak with a good intention and plaster every sore with a "decorative phrase." He has, says Mr. Hodder, "a partly Gallic passion for intellectual veracity, for a clear recognition of the facts before him, however ugly, and a wholly Gallic hatred of hypocrisy." It is Mr. Jerome's intellectual veracity, his ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Well, dear friends and brothers, you never saw nothin' like it—they think as much of each other as two men would! And the way Pete can iron a b'iled shirt is a wonder. . . . Yaas; he found his job at last; plain and decorative ironin'. Often I've seen Maggy, holdin' up a batch of clo's, with pride just oozin' out of her, and heard her say, 'There ain't a person in these here United States that kin slip a flatiron over dry-goods the way my ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... think he has all he can do keeping up with the beauty shop. You see, it is more than a massage parlour. They do real decorative surgery, as it is called. They'll engage to give you a new skin as soft and pink as a baby's. Or they will straighten a nose, or turn an ear. They have light treatment for complexions—the ruby ray, the violet ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... similar character, but somewhat coarser in texture, and heavier. See Plate III., b to g, and Plate IV., f Both these groups include variations in the decorative designs, as may be seen in the rest of ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... chez Froment [the artist who paints such beautiful decorative works for Sevres]; ce matin j'ai dejeune chez Froment, ce soir j'y dine, et ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... half tone engravings by Charles D. Williams. With initial letters, tail-pieces, decorative borders. Beautifully printed, and daintily bound, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... modern floor, remains of the original tesselated pavement were discovered. When the whitewash and plaster were removed from the ceiling it was found in a dangerous condition. There were also found there remains of ancient decorative paintings and rich ornaments worked in gold and silver; but they were too fragmentary to give an idea of the general pattern. Under these circumstances it was resolved to redecorate the ceiling in a style corresponding with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... resultant noise was surely sufficient to satisfy the hungriest vanity of any composer, professional or amateur, who ever lived. Then not only had Lady Rosamund exhibited a large picture at the Lansdowne Gallery (a decorative work this was, representing the manumission of a slave, with the legend underneath, "Hunc hominem liberum esse volo"), but also the proprietors of an illustrated weekly newspaper had published in their summer number, as ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... illuminated texts from the Bible and from Mrs. Eddy's "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" impanelled. A sunburst in the centre of the ceiling takes the place of chandeliers. There is a disc of cut glass in decorative designs, covering one hundred and forty-four electric lights in the form of a star, which is twenty-one inches from point to point, the centre being of pure white light, and each ray under prisms which reflect ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... arrangements the theatre is in keeping with its external magnificence. Entering through a sumptuous vestibule, the visitor passes into the magnificent auditorium, which is, in itself, a rare specimen of decorative art. The seats are admirably arranged, each one commanding a view of the stage. They are luxuriously upholstered, and harmonize with the rich carpets which cover the floor. Three elegant light galleries rise ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... was helped out by a curious old brooch of goldstone, bordered with flowers in blue and white and red and green—tiny blossoms of little stones which looked like the flowers which grow at the snow line on Pike's Peak. Jennie felt that it must be a cheap affair, but it was decorative, and she wondered where Mrs. Irwin got it. She guessed it must have a story—a story in which the stooped, rusty, somber old lady looked like a character drawn to harmonize with the period just after the war. For the black alpaca dress looked more like a ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... not warm enough, and proceeded to direct attention to the various decorative points of her attire. "Look at this parure," said she. "The brooch, the ear-rings, the bracelets: no one in the school has such a set—not ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... done in her lifetime great things for Scotland. She had introduced comforts and luxuries of every kind, and the decorative arts, and a great deal of actual wealth, into a very poor and distracted country. The earliest charter which is found in the Scottish archives is one of Malcolm and Margaret, showing how the time of settlement and established order began ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of these breast plumes parts slightly into two, as you see in the peacock's, and many other such decorative ones. The transition from the entirely leaf-like shape of the active plume, with its oblique point, to the more or less symmetrical dualism of the decorative plume, corresponds with the change from the pointed ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and fragile flowerets, though I am so infatuated by their brilliant sisters. They are lovely to examine, and, as individuals, very precious, but in my opinion useless for decorative purposes. In a body they confuse one another, and you can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... orchestra was placed below the level of the stage, as in a theatre, while the voices sounded freely above. Two harps, one on the east side of the stage and one on the west, saw each other from afar,—a pleasingly decorative device, but as annoying to the ear as pleasing to the eye. The chorus and the four soloists—their task was exceedingly arduous—triumphed completely over the difficulties of this immense work and all the varied and delicate ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... it is not easy to believe her the contemporary of Currer Bell and George Eliot. Both her manner and her method are earlier. Her lengthy and artificial periods, the rounded and decorative sentences that she puts into the mouths of her characters under the extremest pressure of emotion or suffering, the italics, the sentimentalities, are of another age than the sinewy English and hard ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... done on paper—two colonnades—the first one of the Ionic order, supporting a gallery; the second of the Corinthian order, sustaining the light wooden platform of painted wood which no longer exists. The walls, covered with stucco, still retain pretty decorative paintings. Three small subterranean chambers, of very solid construction, perhaps contained the treasury and archives of the State, or something else entirely different—why not those of the temple? In those times the Church was rich; the Saviour ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... To keep the weapon from slipping out of the hand, a stud is left in the hard wood shaft, about two-thirds of the way from the head, the shaft itself being protected by a steel sheathing half way down; the remainder being ornamented with decorative brass plates and strips, and the end shod in a ferrule of silver. The top of the ax is not straight, but curved, both edge and point taking, as it were, their origin in this curve; the edge is formed by a double chamfer, the ax-blade being of uniform thickness. All together, this weapon is perhaps ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... West Coast, the abalone is a most typical species in addition to being a delicious food. The bright-hued shell is widely used for souvenirs such as ash trays and is in demand for buttons and decorative purposes. ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... was completely cottoned, in the decorative manner I have described, Mellasys took a banjo from an old negro, and, striking it, not without a certain unsophisticated and barbaric grace appropriate to the instrument, commanded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... enlightened amateur—"see, how that charlatan of a Fossati has taken care not to increase the number of trinkets now that we are in the reception-rooms. These armchairs seem to await invited guests. They are known. They have been illustrated in a magazine of decorative art in Paris. And that dining-room through that door, with all the silver on the table, would you not think a fete had ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... wedding-chair shop, where they keep sedan-chairs, of four qualities, for hire whenever a wedding occurs. Even the commonest are made gorgeous by silver gilding and lacquer, while the best are really marvels of decorative art, completely covered with the blue lustrous feathers of a kind of kingfisher. In shape they are like a square pagoda, and round each tier are groups of figures. The dresses are also made of expensive feathers, but then they last for generations. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... a decorative young woman, with a face like one of Greuze's pictures and a passion for wearing rose-colour. Her father was that rather famous personage, Lord Sherard, one of the last of the dandies, and probably one of the few men in England in the present day who had fought a duel. He ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the wall of light marl that forms the bank. Constantly refreshed by the adjacent water, they flower and seed, seed and flower, and are haunted by bees and butterflies till the November frosts. The most decorative of all are the spikes of purple loose-strife. In autumn when most of the flowers are dead the tip of the leaf at the heads of the spikes turns as crimson as a flower. The other red flowers are the valerian, in masses of squashed strawberry, and the fig-wort, tall, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Age removed a good deal of his vanity, and I suppose it forced him to part with some portion of his self-esteem. But I was growing older myself and no doubt getting physically a little helpless. I suppose I made senile noises when I dressed and undressed, expressive of my decorative labors. This may have been the reason; possibly not; but at any rate about this time he conceived it his duty to give up his friendship as an equal and to enter my employ as a servant. He became my valet—without wages—and I changed his name ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... portrait of the former queen of Spain by one of the foremost Spanish artists of our day. The royal lady was depicted wearing an enormous pearl; however, the artist informed the author that the real pearl was much smaller than the painted one, but that, in portraying it, a better decorative effect was obtained by increasing its size. Whether Holbein (1497-1543), with his Dutch exactness of portrayal, was led into any similar exaggerations we can never tell, as little as we can know anything definite regarding the true size of ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... detail and exalted the subject. General recognition came to him in 1884, when he published his illustrations to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam—the most sympathetic and beautiful pictorial comment which has ever been given any book of poetry. Since then he has executed much decorative work of a high order, though the mastery in this branch of the art ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... beyond the pale in which he had lately been living. There was no sort of resemblance between the two kinds of splendor, no single point in common. The loftiness and disposition of the rooms in one of the handsomest houses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the ancient gilding, the breadth of decorative style, the subdued richness of the accessories, all this was strange and new to him; but Lucien had learned very quickly to take luxury for granted, and he showed no surprise. His behavior was as far removed from assurance or fatuity on the one hand as from complacency and servility upon ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... reality made up of the individuals who compose it, and that every individual is the best judge of his own interests. Our leading class is an aristocracy, and no aristocracy likes the notion of a State-authority greater than itself, with a stringent administrative machinery superseding the decorative inutilities of lord-lieutenancy, deputy- lieutenancy, and the posse comitatus, which are all in its own hands. Our middle-class, the great representative of trade and Dissent, with its maxims of every man for himself in business, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... "Beauty and the Beast," "Red Riding Hood," etc., etc. Popular tales that are ever in demand, sumptuously illustrated with exquisitely decorative and highly original designs. Printed on rough art paper. 12 full-page colour plates. 144 pp. letterpress, ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... had left an agreeable modest fire—fit for cold April—in the drawing-room. He had just sat down in front of it and was tranquillising himself in the familiar harmonious beauty of the apartment (which, however, did seem rather insipid after the decorative excesses of Queen's room), when he heard footsteps on the little stairway from the upper floor. Mrs. Braiding ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... perennial, can stand our worst winters without any covering, and it grows about so high from the ground (indicating two or three feet), with its geranium-like leaves, and the flower grows about three feet high, all covered with pink bells on the stems. It is a very decorative plant and perfectly hardy. I think it has been much neglected in the Northwest because it is so perfectly hardy and it increases very rapidly. I have over ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... then that the potters' fair came, calpis and amphora, together with lamps against the winter, laid out in order for the choice of buyers; for Keramus, the Greek Vase, is a son of Dionysus, of wine and of Athene, who teaches men all serviceable and decorative art. Then the goat was killed, and its blood poured out at the root of the vines; and Dionysus literally drank the blood of goats; and, being Greeks, with quick and mobile sympathies, [22] deisidaimones, "superstitious," or rather "susceptible of religious ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... iron of the middle ages, and of the time of the Renaissance, and even down to the last century, in Italy, France, and Germany showed, in the crudest examples, the principal virtues of all true decorative art. The reason is not far to seek. The difficulties in the way of working the material with ease imposed certain limitations in design and execution which could not well be disregarded. The lack of machinery (which is responsible for much of the uninteresting character ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various
... in the way of making, towards the end of the seventeenth century, his invention of plate glass, which finally drove Venetian mirrors out of the markets of the world. The Venetian mirrors, charming as they are from the aesthetic point of view of decorative art, are simply blown glass rolled flat, cut, polished, and tinned. The art of making them came, like other arts, to Venice from the East, and in the sixteenth century the Venetian mirror was the true 'glass of fashion' all over Europe. The famous 'Galerie des Glaces' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... on me. They were very richly attired, particularly the first three, who were tres grands seigneurs in Annam,—heavily embroidered silk robes, feathers, and jewels, and when they didn't open their mouths they were rather a decorative group,—were tall, powerfully built men. They knew no French nor English—spoke through the interpreter. My intercourse with them was very limited. They were not near me at dinner, but afterward I tried to talk to them a little. They all stood in a group at one end ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... to go into the chapel to see how the colours were lasting in some decorative work which he had done there himself years before, and there he found his father standing in the aisle to the right of the altar near the door of the sacristy, gazing up fixedly at a particular panel in the dark oakwork which covered that ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of the highest distinction was Major von Piffinhoeffer, of Heidelberg University, whose decorative junk had come direct from the grateful junkers, and whose famous eight-volume work on "Principles of Modern Torture" was a text-book in the realm. A warrior of mettle was Major von Piffinhoeffer, who deserved a more ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... much more scientific than a blue-ribboned petticoat, but infinitely less decorative, little Eve Edgarton lay imprisoned among ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of the plays and poems are included in only six volumes of ideally handy and convenient size, neither too large for the pocket nor too small for the shelf. Each volume contains an artistic coloured frontispiece and a decorative title-page. The binding is specially neat and tasteful, and there is a choice of three distinct styles of cloth and leather bindings, at from ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... usually of copper or brass, which was kept highly polished, and formed, as it hung on the wall, one of the cheerful kitchen discs to reflect the light of the glowing fire. The warming-pan has been deemed of sufficient decorative capacity to make it eagerly sought after by collectors, and a great room of one of these collectors is hung entirely around the four walls with a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... this manuscript that the two published volumes of it were printed. The library forms part of the Museum, which occupies a ground-floor wing of the castle. The first room is an armoury, in which all kinds of arms are arranged, in a decorative way, covering the ceiling and the walls with strange patterns. The second room contains pottery, collected by Casanova's Waldstein on his Eastern travels. The third room is full of curious mechanical toys, and cabinets, and carvings in ivory. Finally, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a most jolly fire burned on the hearth. Felicia removed her mother's hat; Ken put her into the big chair and spirited away her bag. Mrs. Sturgis sat gazing about her—at the white cheese-cloth curtains, the festive bunches of flowers in every available jug, the kitchen chairs painted a decorative blue, and at the three ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... relieved with chimneys beautifully treated and with the embroidered caps of pinnacles and arches, with the porcupine of Louis, the ermine and the festooned rope which formed the devices of Anne of Brittany—the tone of this decorative roof carries out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fair windows open as if they had expanded to let in the rosy dawn of the Renaissance. Charming, for that matter, are the windows of all the chateaux of Touraine, with their squareness ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... servants, some thirty or forty of them, were assembled in their dining-room and assigned various duties, all of which were performed under the supervising eye of Mrs. Wellington, her daughter, or Sara Van Valkenberg. No decorative specialist, or other alien appendage to social functions on a large scale, was in attendance, and, save for the caterer's men, who arranged a hundred odd small tables on the verandas, and the electricians, who hung chandeliers at intervals above them, the arrangements ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... this purpose are those of Greece and Italy, and the headquarters of the school are established at Rome rather than at Athens, because of the greater amount of material there at hand of use to the modern student not only in the art of architecture itself, but in that of mural painting and in the decorative arts, including architectural sculpture. ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 05, May 1895 - Two Florentine Pavements • Various
... F.S.A., in a paper on "Decorative Plaster Work," read before the Society of Arts in April, 1891, refers to the ceilings at Audley End as presenting an excellent idea of the state of the stuccoer's art in the middle of James I.'s reign, and adds, "Few houses in England can show so fine a series of the same ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... less than 150 yards long, it is built entirely of grey stone; with its massive piers, its excellent masonry, its good (although crude) carving, its old-time sculpturing of dreadful-looking animals at either end, its decorative triumphal arches, its masses of memorial tablets (which I could not read), its seven arches of beautiful simplicity and symmetry and perfect proportion, it would have been a credit to any civilized country in the world. I noticed that, in addition to cementing, the stones ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... scarcely breathed during the weary sittings. He recalled the early gossip and sought to evoke her as a professional model. But he gave up in despair. She was hopelessly "ladylike," and to interpret her adequately, only the decorative patterns of earlier men—Mignard, Van Loo, Nattier, Largilliere—would translate ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... English sets can be made up in a style not distinguishable from the original, as one may easily see by calling on our worthy next neighbor, Briggs, who holds the opposite corner to our 'Atlantic Monthly.' No porcelain, it is true, is yet made in America, these decorative arts being exercised on articles imported from Europe. Our tables must, therefore, perforce, be largely indebted to foreign lands for years to come. Exclusive of this item, however, I believe it would ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... photographs here reproduced, the aim has been not so much to show exhibits as to illustrate the plan, architecture and decorative art of the Exposition, and to indicate the advance which it scores over its predecessors. The pictures, with their full "underlines," will aid those who have not yet visited the Exposition to apprehend its spirit and much of its unprecedented ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... entering the factories, on the other hand, did so to earn money to help pay their expenses at home until they married, or in order to buy gay and expensive clothes, unconsciously, perhaps, for advertising as well as decorative purposes. ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... what is good and what is horrible is to study what is good in books, in museums, or in art classes in the universities, or even by studying the magazines devoted to decorative art. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... character and was most carefully prepared. Some of the ancient specimens are much superior to those at present made, and are acknowledged by the finest potters of East Mesa to be beyond their power of ceramic production. The coloration is generally in red, brown, yellow, and black. Decorative treatment by spattering is common in the food basins, and this was no doubt performed, Chinese fashion, by means of the mouth. The same method is still employed by the Hopi priests in painting ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... lively appreciation of the humorous and the pathetic, and exhibited remarkable artistic talent, sketching from nature with fidelity and ease. His parents being in humble circumstances, he was apprenticed as a house-painter, and soon became distinguished for his skill in the decorative branch of his profession. On the expiry of his apprenticeship, he cultivated painting in a higher department of the art, and his pictures held a highly respectable place at the annual exhibitions of the Scottish Academy. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... during Julie's illness from distant friends, as if they must almost have intuitively known the purport of the opening injunction in her unpublished epistle, enjoining liberality in the practice of cutting flowers for decorative purposes! Her room for three months was kept so continuously bright by the presence of these creations of GOD which she ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... two or three acquaintances in the diplomatic service at Washington. He hoped to squeeze invitations out of them; for in a country entirely populated by monotonous Misters and Mrs-es, with nothing more decorative than a colonel or a general or a judge, even a poor Irish earl isn't to be sneezed at. Di needn't be handicapped by every one remembering that her mother would have described herself as a "music 'all h'artist"; and several Americans living in New York had ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... button naturally requires a fine coat to put it on, and many were the consultations and propositions as to what it should be. Mr. Slocdolager had done nothing in the decorative department, and many thought the failure of funds was a good deal attributable to that fact. Mr. Waffles was not the man to lose an opportunity of adding another costume to his wardrobe, and after an infinity of trouble, and trials of almost ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... buildings, the intentions of their founders and builders; but that was to be expected from an historian who had written upon the history of universities and learning. What surprised and delighted me was his seeing eye. He told me which of the decorative motifs on the Tower of the Four Orders were usual at the time when it was built, and which were less common. At All Souls he pointed out the seldom appreciated merits of Hawksmoor's twin towers. His eye was not merely informed but sensitive. I ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... would refer to certain styles of decoration and hangings which they had seen in the Pullman parlor-cars. He had never seriously regarded the influence of the furnishing of these cars upon the travelling public; now he realized that, in a decorative sense, they were a distinct factor and ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... best of them are five pictures, which were painted for Madame Dubarry, representing frolicsome scenes, young people playing games. At the foot of the Rue des Dominicains, in a large house with bulging iron grating, are some decorative paintings attributed to Flemish artists. These pictures are shown by courtesy. In the centre of the old town is the parish church, built in the 11th cent., but altered and repaired in the 17th. It contains several pictures, but the only good one is an Ascension of ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... of a general character; many cases of ancient Roman, Greek, and Byzantine coins; more than an hundred almost priceless examples of old Italian carvings, in marble and stone, with some dozens of ancient articles of decorative furniture; reproductions of delicately-wrought articles of Persian Art work, plate belonging to the old City Companies, the Universities, and from Amsterdam and the Hague; a collection of Wedgwood and other ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... geometrical—sometimes directly so, as in the system developed by the Moors. Will the psychology of the new dispensation find expression through some adaptation of four-dimensional geometry? The idea is far from absurd, by reason of the decorative quality inherent in many of the regular hypersolids of four-dimensional space when projected upon solid ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Anglo-Saxon churches were, however, rudely built, and, as far as can be ascertained, with some few exceptions, were of no great dimensions and almost entirely devoid of ornamental mouldings, though in some instances decorative sculpture and mouldings are to be met with; but in the repeated incursions of the Danes, in the ninth and tenth centuries, so general was the destruction of the monasteries and churches, which, when the country became tranquil, were rebuilt ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... condensed version of "Robinson Crusoe" has blocks of distinct, if archaic, interest. The three here given show a certain sense of decorative treatment (probably the result of the artist's inability to be realistic), which is distinctly amusing. One might select hundreds of woodcuts of this type, but those here reproduced will serve as well as a thousand ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... there were piled up baskets of various sizes, and at another corner was an open cupboard containing books,—an article of decorative furniture found in cottages much more rarely than coloured prints ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accessories are then put in place; and also the fruits and bon-bons, which may be commingled with the flowers in working out a decorative design, or they may be placed, in ornamental dishes, at the four corners of a wide table, to balance the flowers in the centre; or, they may be arranged along the middle of a long table. For fruit, silver-gilt baskets, or epergnes of glass ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton |
