"Ornamentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or which we shall meet in our walks through the foreign pavilions. With M. Mueller, who has given his name to a kind of brick covered with enamel on one of its faces, ceramic work becomes a portion of the very fabric itself as well as of its ornamentation. This principle applied with rare talent to the covering of the two domes of the palaces has given a very curious and interesting result. This covering is composed of enamelled tiles of more than 600 varieties which ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... preciousness of the material was only an incident in the artistic character of the work; but what is felt most deeply is often the least spoken about. Later descriptions, such as that of Pausanias, lay emphasis on the details and accessories of the statue, the ornamentation of helmet and shield and sandals; they lay themselves open to the stricture of Lucian on "such as can neither see nor praise the whole beauty of the Olympian Zeus, great and noble as it is, nor describe it to others that do not know it, but admire ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom. Against the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked photo-engravings that had taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man and woman, clad in scanty bathing suits, seated side by side in a careening sail boat,—the work of a popular illustrator whose ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... explanation, it may be added, that the wisdom of the Architect is displayed in combining, as only a skillful Architect can do, and as God has done everywhere,—for example, in the tree, the human frame, the egg, the cells of the honeycomb—strength, with grace, beauty, symmetry, proportion, lightness, ornamentation. That, too, is the perfection of the orator and poet—to combine force, strength, energy, with grace of style, musical cadences, the beauty of figures, the play and irradiation of imagination and fancy; and so, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... stretching off into the distance. There was rich furniture, carpets of softest velvet covered the floors, mirrors and paintings filled the walls; there were exquisite vases of delicate tints and graceful forms, finest statuary, innumerable and endless articles of ornamentation, and, lying about in rich profusion, were costly silks and glittering satins and rare laces; jewellery flashed out here and there; diamonds and pearls and all precious gems in beautiful settings, novels in costly binding, food delicate and tempting in abundance and variety. "It ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... gold-embroidered waistbelt of some soft yellow leather, whose fastening was formed of a gold clasp covered by a large flat emerald, two others of similar shape being arranged so that when the belt was fastened round the waist they lay on either side. It was a magnificent piece of ornamentation, but barbaric, and such as would be worn ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... recased with stone, and several unsightly structures that impeded the view of the church were removed. All of these so-called restorations were, however, but partial in extent. Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation, added at various epochs, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... in Pall Mall, near Her Majesty's Theater, is being laid with this paving, which is also being extensively used in London and the provinces for roads, tramways, and flooring; the composition is likewise sometimes cast into artistic forms for the ornamentation of buildings, or into slabs for roofing, facing, and other purposes. The subway from the Exhibition to the District Railway is laid ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... study the old portraits, concluding that the wigs must have been uncomfortable. Octavius wickedly hints that there is a fashion among ladies of the present time!—but as he does not tread on our toes, we ignore this insinuation, and turn our attention to the elaborate ornamentation of the woodwork—which is all antique hand-carving—in the council chambers; and are much interested in some rare old books in the Library,—among them a copy of the Psalms, three hundred years old; and another, with music, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... an atmosphere of brilliant colour, with ever-shining sun, the bluest of skies, and the purple glow of the desert always before them, it is not surprising that they used their brushes with lavish hand. Every plane surface called for ornamentation, whether on temple or shroud. Their pigments, both mineral and vegetable, were remarkable for ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... one who smiles even as he slays his prey. And in his hands—ah, dreadful final detail of this dreadful picture—he held outstretched, extended and presented in my general direction, a double-barrelled fowling piece, enormous in size and glittering with metal ornamentation. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... William the Silent is an elaborate erection, of stone and marble, statuary and ornamentation. Justice and Liberty, Religion and Valour, represented by female figures, guard the tomb. It seems to me to lack impressiveness: the man beneath was too fine to need all this display and talent. More imposing is the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... groom were adorning the beams with festoons. The men from the coffee-tavern supplied the essentials, but the ladies undertook the decoration, and Aunt Adeline, in a basket-chair, with her feet on a box, directed the ornamentation with great taste and ability. Constance Hacket had been told off to make up a little bouquet to lay beside each plate, and Dolores volunteered to ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... printing that high lights each building is an achievement in modern art. Who but Americans would dream of using printing instead of gargoyles or classic medallions as ornamentation. Some of it is very beautiful and almost none is ugly. The use of the word "Paige," the printing of "Buick," the "H" of Hupmobile, the Mercury "A" of Arnold are to me ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... South Coast, the writer believes, does it still generally obtain, and even there it is limited to the larger passenger locomotives. Gone, too, is the old decoration of the tenders with the Prince of Wales's plumes, and the only ornamentation of engines and coaches finally left being the Company's crest, the English rose entwined with the Red Dragon of Wales, the original design for which was made and presented to the directors many years ago by the late Mr. W. W. E. Wynne, of Peniarth, Towyn, a noted ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... exceedingly rough implement self-inflicted gashes on the chest and arms (presumably for ornamentation) are made. The rites of circumcision, and other initiatory operations, for the proper performance of which one would suppose the skill of a trained surgeon necessary, are carried out by means ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... nothing can be cooler or more mossy than the dressing-room of the bath. That is about all I have to say about country matters. The gardener, indeed, as well as Philotimus and Cincius are pressing on the ornamentation of your town house; but I also often look in upon it myself, as I can do without difficulty. Wherefore don't be ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... chiefly those of royal palaces. These buildings were of enormous extent. The palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, for example, covered more than twenty acres. Although the country possessed building stone in plenty, stone was not used except for superficial ornamentation, baked and unbaked bricks being the architect's sole reliance. This was a mere blind following of the example of Babylonia, from which Assyria derived all its culture. The palaces were probably only one story in height. Their principal splendor was in their interior decoration of painted ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... we came to the cathedral. It is seated on the very top pinnacle of the rock of Verdun, suggesting the French cities of Provence. Its two towers, severe and lacking ornamentation, are the landmarks of the countryside for miles around. When I came back to America I read the story of an American correspondent whom the Germans had brought down from Berlin to see the destruction of Verdun. They had brought him ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... new era was distinctly announced. The Inferno, usually ascribed to him, among the reliefs on the front of Orvieto Cathedral,[1] and in his noble pulpit at Pistoia, shows the traces of the antique only in unimportant details, ornamentation, etc. The antique served him, no doubt, as a hint to independent study, but the whole intent is different,—all the beauties and all the defects arrived at by a different road. In place of the impassive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... had been raised a beast of prey. He wore his leopard skin at first in response to a desire to parade a trophy of his prowess, for he had slain the leopard with his knife in a hand-to-hand combat. He saw that the skin was beautiful, which appealed to his barbaric sense of ornamentation, and when it stiffened and later commenced to decompose because of his having no knowledge of how to cure or tan it was with sorrow and regret that he discarded it. Later, when he chanced upon a lone, black warrior wearing ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gave it birth. 'Stereotype' is another word of the same character. It was invented—not the thing, but the word,—by Didot not very long since; but it is now absorbed into healthy general circulation, being current in a secondary and figurative sense. Ruskin has given to 'ornamentation' the sanction and authority of his name. 'Normal' and 'abnormal', not quite so new, are yet of recent introduction into ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... architecture portrayed in the pigtail age nearly always has a pigtail look. The ornamentation of leaves and vines, executed in accordance with the laws of organic necessity, becomes, without the draughtsman being aware of it, an arbitrarily curved rococo scroll; the proportions, which in reality soar upward, spread out in width, so that one might think it possible for the eyesight to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois, those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour and device of elegant opulence, modern ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... notwithstanding all our modern advancement in the application of remedies to the cure of disease, prompts me to point out to you the many ways of retaining, without medication, the hair, which is a defense, ornamentation, and adornment to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... moments later Gahan of Gathol emerged from the room a warrior of Manator in every detail of harness, equipment, and ornamentation. He had removed from the leather of the dead man the insignia of his house and rank so that he might pass, with the least danger of arousing ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be wondered at than a difference in weights and measures. In Java, and particularly in Borneo and the Moluccas, the utensils in daily use are ornamented with so refined a feeling for form and color, that they are praised by our artists as patterns of ornamentation and afford a proof that the labor is one of love, and that it is presided over by an acute intelligence. [Native art-sense spoiled.] Such a sense of beauty is seldom to be met with in the Philippines. Everything there is imitation or careless ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight of the sea. Here the arbutus ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... our self-possession, we all advanced for a closer look at the murderous object dangling before us. We found it to be a heavy leaden weight painted on its lower end to match the bosses of stucco-work which appeared at regular intervals in the ornamentation of the ceiling. When drawn up into place, that is, when occupying the hole from which it now hung suspended, the portion left to protrude would evidently bear so small a proportion to its real bulk as to justify any eye in believing it to be the mate, and the harmless mate, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... hall lighted by torches and decorated with stands of antique armor. From the centre of this hall sprang a Gothic staircase, so light, so richly sculptured, so full of niches and statues, slender columns, foliated capitals, and delicate ornamentation of every kind, that it looked a very blossoming of the stone. Following Dalrymple up this superb staircase and through a vestibule of carved oak, I next found myself in a room that might have been the scene ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of two leaves, a, Fig. 31, is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading leaf; but that at b is prettier, because it has a head or master leaf; and c more satisfactory still, because the subordination ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... of verification, when it at length appeared, bore traces of the jealous prejudices of the Parliament. "They the said assembly and academy," it ran, "shall not be powered to take cognizance of anything but the ornamentation, embellishment, and augmentation of the French language, and of the books that shall be made by them and by other persons who shall ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... brightens the facade and emphasizes the fenestration. Most of the lintels take the shape of a flat, gauged arch with flutings simulating mortar joints that radiate from an imaginary center below and mark off voussoirs and a keystone. Usually there is no surface ornamentation, the shape of the parts being depended upon to form a decorative pattern, the shallow vertical and horizontal scorings on the lintels of the Morris house being exceptional. These, the lintels of Cliveden and of the Free ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... work having been entrusted to Italian workmen, who were engaged on it for several years. The numerous statues of Carrara marble are well executed, and other items are also of the best. But the effect of the whole is inharmonious, and the great lines are obscured by over-ornamentation. You are reminded of an over-dressed woman. The pulpit, surmounted by a lofty conical canopy richly gilt, is supported on four lofty pillars of coffee-coloured marble highly polished. The baldacchino is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... address was simple, earnest, and direct, unincumbered by that rhetorical ornamentation which the American people have always admired as the highest form of eloquence. Those Northerners who had expected magniloquent periods and exaggerated outbursts of patriotism were disappointed; and as they listened in vain for the scream of the eagle, many grumbled at the absence of what ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... blasting, must be traversed before we come to the Snow Ball Room, beautiful with round spots of untinted carbonate of lime, as if fresh soft snow had been thrown by the handful over walls and ceilings, with the additional ornamentation of calcite crystals. In the crevice beyond rises the Church Steeple, diminishing regularly, though roughly, in size, to a height of sixty feet, but not degraded with the little squirming stairway usually seen ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... of individual ownership surround the millions of homes on Mars. No lines of demarcation divide one plot of land from another. The millions of beautiful homes—beautiful in their simplicity, for over-ornamentation such as the dwellers of your Earth practise, is not tolerated on our planet—belong to the Commonwealth. The same are allotted to the individual as ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... know nothing with which the poem may be compared: its method and its magic are alike its own. We might hear it or fancy it perhaps in one of the Ballades of Chopin, with its entrancing harmonies, its varied and delicate ornamentation, its under-tone of passion and sadness, its storms and gusts of wind-like lashing notes, and the piercing shiver that thrills ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and Guitar-maker; rich and chaste ornamentation of his work; description of examples extant in England—TIELKE, JOACHIM (ii.); fine examples of a later maker of this name at South Kensington and elsewhere . . . . . . . . . . ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... nor the subject of the mosaic itself,[124] the inscription given above[118] should help to settle the date of the mosaic. Under Claudius, between the years 51 and 54 A.D., a portico was decorated with marble and a coating of marble facing. That this was a very splendid ornamentation is shown by the fact that it is mentioned so particularly in the inscription. And if in 54 A.D. marble and marble facing were things so worthy of note, then certainly one hundred and thirty years earlier there was no marble ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... for myself; it never occurred to me to think of taking a weapon with me. How my revolver—and it is undoubtedly my revolver, for there was a peculiar break in the silver ornamentation on the handle which is easily recognisable—how this revolver of mine got into his room, is more than I can say. Until the Police Commissioner showed it to me two or three days ago, I had no idea that it was not in the box in my study where it is ordinarily ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... that a man may have concentrated no less will and expectation on his wristbands, gaiters, and the shape of his hat-brim, or an appearance which impresses you as that of the modern "swell," than the Ojibbeway on an ornamentation which seems to us much more elaborate. In what concerns the search for admiration at least, it is not true that the effect is equal to the cause and resembles it. The cause of a flat curl on the masculine forehead, such as might be seen when ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the streets that knotted themselves in the city. From the river, curving past the statue of an Indian administrator, came a string of country people with baskets on their heads. The sun struck a vivid note with the red and the saffron they wore, turned them into an ornamentation, in the profuse Oriental taste, of the empty expanse. There was the completest freedom in the wide tree-dotted spaces round which the city gathered her shops and her palaces, the fullest invitation to disburden any heaviness that might oppress, to give the wings of words to any joy that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... take her eyes away. But when, afterward, they turned to a portfolio of Architecture, and she found her eager to examine spires and arches and capitals, rich reliefs and stately facades and sculptured gates, and exclaiming with pleasure at the colored drawings of Florentine ornamentation, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... whole, is distinguished for a dignified but rich simplicity, arising from its plain large surfaces, mingled and edged here and there with fine-cut and elegant ornamentation. The court and buildings of the Wells Theological College have a thoroughly quaint, old-fashioned look, quiet, rigid, and medieval; as if the students reared there could not but be Churchmen of the "Brother Ignatius" stamp, gentlemen, scholars, and—priests. I can not leave Wells ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... serene which the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear. The emerald-green tail is fringed with transparent golden lace; the malachite body has the sheen of gold; the chief legs are of emerald with ruby joints, and silvery claws; the minor as of amber, while over all is a general sheen of ornamentation of points and blotches of sapphire blue. Long white antennae, delicate and opaque, spring from the head. The decorative hues are not laid on flat, but are coarsely powdered and sprinkled as in the case ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... by these simple weavers into their blankets, sashes and dresses? In this as in basketry and pottery, the answer is found in nature. Many of their textile designs suggest a derivation from basketry ornamentation, which originally came from nature. The angular, curveless figures of interlying plaits predominate and the principal subjects are the same—conventional devices representing clouds, stars, lightning, the rainbow, and ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... discovered to be exquisite in detail, of rosewood and mahogany, with many brass chasings and carvings, after the fashion of the Empire, and here and there florid ornamentation following that of the court of the earlier Louis. Fanciful little clocks with carved scrolls stood about; Cupid tapestries had replaced the original tawdry coverings of these common walls, and what had once been a dingy fireplace was now faced with ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... their previous lives,—"BE KINDLY AFFECTIONED ONE TO ANOTHER." One sentence, over a door communicating with the Master's side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary,—"HE THAT RULETH OVER MEN MUST BE JUST." All these are charactered in black-letter, and form part of the elaborate ornamentation of the Louse. Everywhere—on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them—appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... several famous gunsmiths in Philadelphia. Some of the best of these old rifles have been preserved and are really beautiful weapons, with delicate hair triggers, gracefully curved stocks, and quaint brass or even gold or silver mountings. The ornamentation was often done by the hunter himself, who would melt a gold or silver coin and pour it into some design which he had carved with his knife ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... coadjutors. Mr. Musgrave, of course. Now, at this moment, through the gray light, and across the candles, I can see him leaning against the font, while Barbara kneels with bent head at his feet, completing the ornamentation of the pedestal. I always knew that things would come right if we waited long enough, and coming right they are—coming, not come, for still, he has not spoken. I have consulted each and all ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... should be drawn to such an one was only the contradiction seen on all sides in life. Because he had that old-fashioned distrust of the independent, self-reliant woman, he must needs go to the opposite extreme, and let himself be drawn to one capable of little else in the world but ornamentation. Doris, she knew, was fitted only to be a rich man's plaything. Dudley, she felt instinctively, would start off by expecting of her things she had never had to give, and in his dismay and disappointment might ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... no doubt told you that I want to make a transcription of the Salamaleikum. But don't forget that another Overture is inevitably NECESSARY, in spite of the refined, masterly counterpoint and ornamentation of ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... which shows most fully the unparalleled splendour of Moorish decoration. It is a square room, very lofty, with alcoves on three sides, at the bottom of which are windows; and the walls are covered, from the dado of tiles to the roof, with the richest and most varied ornamentation. The Moorish workmen did not spare themselves nor economise their exuberant invention. One pattern follows another with infinite diversity. Even the alcoves, and there are nine, are covered each with different designs, so that the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... and Brown, architects, is the largest and most splendid of the garden structures. (p. 24.) Byzantine in its architecture, suggesting the Mosque of Ahmed I, at Constantinople, its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French in spirit. The ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any building in the Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not inappropriate. In size and form, no less than in theme, the structure is well adapted to carry such rich decoration. This is the palace of the bounty of nature; its ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... sell, and would not hear of letting the house to you, even at a good rent. You know something of this in London, but not nearly to the same extent as here. In these speculative houses there is often some little attempt at ornamentation—a bow-window thrown out, or the veranda lifted to form a Gothic porch, or the drawing-room brought out beyond the rest of the house, so as to form what is known as a T cottage, though it should ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the centre of the yard or court at Tattersall's, a significant representation of an old fox, and I often wondered whether it was set up as a warning, or merely by way of ornamentation, or as the symbol of sport. It might have been to tell you to be wary and on the alert. But whatever the original design of this statue to Reynard, the old fox read me a solemn lesson, and seemed to be always saying, "Take care, Harry; be on your guard. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of such supreme importance for those who wish to understand fully the artistic tastes of the Romans, and also their artistic limitations. If the contents of the Museum seem colourless and cold, and prove unsatisfying and disappointing, here the eye of the artist can feast upon the classical ornamentation which remains fairly fresh in spite of a dozen years of exposure to daylight. For this province of art is peculiarly associated with the opening years of the Empire, and Pompeii is naturally the chief ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... did great damage here several centuries ago in a war with India, for they fired several cannon balls straight into the mouth of the cave, which carried away several of the columns and destroyed the ornamentation of others, but the Royal Asiatic Society has taken the trouble to ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... various persons. One accomplished writer finds it "not unlike that made by the photographs of those gigantic structures in the northern and eastern parts of India, which are seen in full series on the walls of the South Kensington, and by their barbaric profusion of ornamentation and true magnificence of design give the stay-at-home Briton some faint inkling of the empire which has invested his queen with another and more high-sounding title. Yet when close at hand the building does not bear out this connection with Indian architecture of the grand style; it might be mere ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... could think of at the time. It was measurably the same within the church, but it was not quite the same in the reserves I was obliged to make, the reefs I was obliged to take in my rapture. The fact is, that unless you delight in a hugeness whose bareness no ornamentation can, or does at least, conceal, you do not find the interior of St. Peter's adequate to the exterior. In the mere article of hugeness, even, it fails through the interposition of the baldachin midway of the vast nave, and each detail seems to fail of the office of beauty ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... house would be almost as strange to them as to an Altrurian. But while we should regard its furnishings as vulgar and unwholesome, most Americans would admire and covet its rich rugs or carpets, its papered walls, and thickly curtained windows, and all its foolish ornamentation, and most American women would long to have a house like the ordinary high-stoop New York house, that they might break their backs over its stairs, and become invalids, and have servants about them to harass them ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... plain, fine in texture, thin, white, unglazed and engraved in simple script without flourishes. Gilt edges, rounded or clipped corners, tinted surfaces or any oddity of lettering, such as German or Old English text, are to be avoided. A photograph or any ornamentation whatever upon a card savors of ill-breeding or rusticity. Have the script engraved always, never printed. The engraved autograph is no longer considered in good taste, neither are written cards as elegant ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... my remarks on the concertos run counter to those made by W. von Lenz. The F minor Concerto he holds to be an uninteresting work, immature and fragmentary in plan, and, excepting some delicate ornamentation, without originality. Nay, he goes even so far as to say that the passage-work is of the usual kind met with in the compositions of Hummel and his successors, and that the cantilena in the larghetto is in the jejune style of Hummel; the last movement also ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... in dentistry, and in the arts for jewelry, gilding, and other forms of ornamentation. Consumption for these purposes has been increasing of late years and now takes a third or more of the world's annual production. In the United States, before war-time restrictions were adopted, the consumption ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... success in court depended upon the length of his purse Married? No, she hoped not Monument of procrastination Not much inclination to change his clothes or his cabin One has to dodge this sort of question Ornamentation is apt to precede comfort in our civilization What a price to ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... staircases, the floors were covered with cocoa-nut matting, the rooms admirably heated with hot-water pipes, there were plaster casts and officials. In the first room the students practised drawing from the flat. Engraved outlines of elaborate ornamentation were given them, and these they drew with lead pencil, measuring the spaces carefully with compasses. In about six months or a year the student had learned to use his compass correctly, and to produce a fine hard black-lead outline; the harder and finer the outline, the more ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... importance. Light arcades surround the Court of the Lions with its fountain, and adorn the ends of the other chief court; and the stalactite pendentive, rare in Moorish work, appears in the "Hall of Ambassadors" and some other parts of the edifice. But its chief glory is its ornamentation, less durable, less architectural than that of the Cairene buildings, but making up for this in delicacy and richness. Minute vine-patterns and Arabic inscriptions are interwoven with waving intersecting lines, forming a net-like framework, to ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... than images and relics which have a legend. Their appreciation of ecclesiastical art is too often regulated by the practical and utilitarian order of ideas. To dazzle the eye of the peasant may, and does, become the single aim of church ornamentation. Hence the brassy, vulgar altars, and those coloured plaster images of modern manufacture that one sees with regret in so many of the country churches ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... gardens of a priest); little do I care even for the baths of Maria Padilla, which, in fact, have slightly the effect of an alkaline; but what outlines, what harmonious profusion in these lines, what incredible voluptuousness in all this ornamentation! Would that I could send them you in this envelope, such as I have felt and devoured them ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... no large amount of Puritanical scruples about fine array had passed over into eighteenth century America. Whether in New England, the Middle Colonies, or the South, the natural longing of woman for ornamentation and beautiful adornment had gained supremacy, and from the records we may judge that some ladies of those days expended an amount on clothing not greatly out of proportion with the amount spent to-day by ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... so effectively that even the name of the kindly Marquis had been forgotten. I am sure that he, himself, at the end of that ten-day period could not have recognised his converted salons where the elaborate ornamentation had been changed to the severe simplicity typical of a United States ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... pen-drawing facsimiled by Mr. Allen with more than his usual care in the frontispiece to this number of 'Proserpina,' was one of many executed during the investigation of the schools of Gothic (German, and later French), which founded their minor ornamentation on the serration of the thistle leaf, as the Greeks on that of the Acanthus, but with a consequent, and often morbid, love of thorny points, and insistance upon jagged or knotted intricacies of stubborn vegetation, which is connected in a deeply mysterious way with the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the room hastily. I didn't say anything for a moment, for it was impossible to do justice, impromptu, to the subject. Toddie had a progressive mind—if pictorial ornamentation was good for old books, why should not similar ornamentation be extended to objects more likely to be seen? Such may not have been Toddie's line of thought, but his recent operations warranted such a supposition. He had cut out a number of pictures, and ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... same, whether it be the coarse ornamentation of the cheap cottage, or the work of the fashionable architect; we feel that the decoration is superficial and may be dispensed with, and then, however skillful, it becomes superfluous. The more elaborate the worse, for attention is the more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated to some Saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases, and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation. Immensely tall wax candles stand upon the altars of these chapels, and before one sat a woman, with a great supply of tapers, one of which was burning. I suppose these were to be lighted as offerings to the saints, by the true believers. Artificial flowers were hung at some of the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whole effect is in the strictest sense architectural. Few large buildings teach so clearly the great lesson that beauty in a building depends first of all upon composition, not decoration; upon masses, not details; upon the use and shaping, not the ornamentation of features; and very few show half so plainly that mediaeval architects could realize this fact. We are too apt to think that Gothic art cannot be individual without being eccentric, or interesting without ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... are useful for joining together edges of cushion covers, bags, detached bands, also for the ornamentation of dress, and for embroideries upon which drawn thread work is not possible. A stout thread is usually suitable for the purpose. The raw edges must first be turned in and flattened, and the parts to be joined can if necessary be tacked in place on a temporary ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... attracted much attention, its real merit consists in being wholly in white marble, and being covered throughout with a mosaic in 'pietra dura'—the first, apparently, and certainly one of the most splendid, examples of that class of ornamentation ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... altar is exceedingly rich in artistic ornamentation, representing in its design the religious history of the world, and is the only one of the kind in existence. Although the foundation stones of this great pile were laid seventy years ago, this grand anthem in stone has not yet reached its "amen," many additions ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... fully caparisoned in the Spanish fashion. His garb was of buckskin, but plain and devoid of ornamentation. A wide hat swept over his well-tanned face, and from beneath its brim there shone the steely ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... follows him, in his interesting treatise on the Beginnings of Art (111, etc.), thereby marring his chapter on "Personal Decoration." In the following pages I shall show, on the contrary, that when we subject these primitive customs of "ornamentation" and mutilation to a critical examination we find in nearly every case that they are either not at all or only indirectly (not esthetically), connected with the relations of the sexes; and that neither does personal beauty exist as a rule among savages, nor have they ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... drank considerable whiskey, and amused himself by running his pony up and down the one street, firing off his gun, and shouting at the top of his voice. This was Jones' idea of a good time, and his method of contributing his share to the sanguinary ornamentation of the embryo metropolis. ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... general tattoo their bodies and arms very much. The women confine this ornamentation to the chin, having three perpendicular lines from the middle of the chin to the lip, and one or more running on each side, nearly parallel with the corner of the mouth. Their dress consists of leather; that of the men is a pair of leggings, reaching up to the hip and fastened to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... may signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment. It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some thing unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete. The ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... manner each group of people possesses its scarifier, who by practice becomes adept. Scarification simply for purposes of ornamentation is not practiced to any great extent by the Negritos around Pinatubo. They burn themselves for curative purposes (see Chap. VI) and are sometimes covered with scars, but not the kind of scars produced by incisions. Only occasionally ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... and gilt, but which had since received, probably under the Empire, a coat of plain white paint. The three doors of the study, salon and dining-room, surmounted by oval panels, are awaiting a restoration that is more than needed. The wood-work is heavy, but the ornamentation is not without merit. The salon, panelled throughout, recalls the great century by its tall mantelpiece of Languedoc marble, its ceiling decorated at the corners, and by the style of its windows, which still retain their little panes. The dining-room, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of her own fingers on the smoothness of it. In a niche of the thick wall stood a bronze god, and a medicine bowl with serrated edges, and a serpent winged and crowned painted in fine lines to encircle it. On the wall was a deerskin of intricate ornamentation, good and soft in the dressing, it was painted in many symbols of the Apache gods and the prayer thoughts. From her mother Yahn had learned them and had painted them in ceremonial colors. The great goddess of the white shell things—and white flowers—and ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the rocks revealed many colours, that figured but little in the grand colour scheme of the canyon as a whole—the detailed ornamentation of the magnificent rock structure. A fracture of wall would show the true colour of the rock, beneath the stain; lime crystals studded its surface, like gems glinting in the sunlight; beautifully tinted jasper, resembling the petrified wood found in another part of Arizona, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... characteristic costume I have described, with only a slight divergence of color or ornamentation. They were of only two types—jet black tresses, black eyes, and red-feathered wings like Miela; or the less vivid, more ethereal Anina—blue-eyed, golden-haired, with wing ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... decoration produced by variations in the weave, little ornamentation is found in the basketry from Abra, but the Tinguian of Ilocos Norte make and distribute large quantities of baskets with colored patterns. Colored vines are sometimes woven in, but the common method is to employ blackened bamboo, both in warp ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the eye, preceding the palace. And as we approach, it is Stamboul indeed—for me dear old Stamboul—which is called to mind; there is nothing, whether in the lines of its architecture or in the details of its ornamentation, to suggest the art of the Arabs—a purer art it may be than this and of which many excellent examples may be seen in Cairo. No; it is a corner of Turkey into ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... except the fine, and in most parts well-conditioned walls. Here and there a double-arched window, with a bit of fine carving in the capitals, peeps out from the jutting uglinesses of seraglio windows, close latticed and mysterious; one or two fine doorways, neglected and battered as to their ornamentation, some coats of arms, three or four arched gateways, and as many fountains, are all that will catch the eye of the artist inside the walls, unless it be the port, with its quaint and picturesque boats ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Count, closing with the sprightly melody, "Ah! che d'amore," leads up to the chamber aria of Rosina, so well known on the concert-stage, "Una voce poco fa," which is not only very expressive and of great compass, but is remarkably rich in ornamentation. A short dialogue in recitative then occurs between Bartolo and Basilio, in which they plot to circumvent Rosina by calumny, which gives occasion for the Calumny aria, as it is generally known ("La calunnia"), a very sonorous bass ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... of the garments were metal trimmings. "They look like silver," said George, excitedly; "and what is this? It seems to be silver," as he brushed a bracelet-like piece of ornamentation with the sleeve of his coat. As they advanced new articles came in sight; a bench; a veritable chair, or couch, the covering of which was there merely to give it form, but the substance had gone. Only the wood remained and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... easterne, and westerne Indians fetch all their coyne from these southern mint- masters. From hence they have most of their curious pendants and bracelets; hence they have their great stone pipes which will hold a quarter of an ounce of tobacco." And in regard to their practice of ornamentation, he remarks again: "although they be poore, yet is there in them the sparkes of naturall pride which appeares in their longing desire after many kinde of ornaments, wearing pendants in their eares, as formes of birds, beasts and fishes, carved out of bone, shels, and stone, with long bracelets of ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... cathedral are extremely interesting and worthy of careful study, though one cannot but remember how much of the wages of the poor populace has been cunningly diverted from their family support to supply this useless ornamentation. For this object indulgences are sold to the rich, and the poor peons are made to believe their future salvation depends upon their liberal contributions to support empty forms and extravagance. In his "Through the Heart of Mexico," ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... in the best specimen of this kind which I have come upon, I feel pretty sure, from internal evidence, that the buried man had composed his own epitaph, and probably designed the form of the stone and its ornamentation. I found this stone in the churchyard of Minturne Magna, in Dorset. The stone was five feet high and four and a half broad—a large canvas, so to speak. On the upper half a Tree of Knowledge was depicted, with leaves and apples, the serpent wound about the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... his own dress which bothers a business man so much as it is that of some one else—his stenographer, for instance. Men do not have quite so much opportunity to make themselves ridiculous as women. Their conventions of dress are stricter, and, as a rule, they can express their love of color and ornamentation only in their choice of ties and socks. Girls have practically no restrictions except what happens to be the style at the moment, and a young girl untrained in selecting and combining colors and lines, and making money for the first time in her life, is more likely than not to make herself ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... opinion of the big folk at Westminster, and had a future. He had a winning way with women—a subtle, perniciously attractive way with her sex, and to herself he had been delicately persuasive. He had the ancient gift of picturesqueness without ornamentation. He had a strong will and a healthy imagination. He was a man of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... generally used for the purpose of ornamentation are the lily and the crocus. For the first time the importance of pottery as an evidence of the condition of the art of the period is second to that of other artistic products. It is to Middle Minoan III. that there belongs the wonderful fabric ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... the ivory-horn, with its hideous ornamentation of human teeth, proclaimed the advent of another day I took Omar aside and told him of what I had witnessed and overheard. After I had ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... forming a word that he does not write frequently, but his signature he is more sure about. He strikes it off without hesitancy, and in the majority of cases appends some meaningless flourish, which may be described as a superfluous stroke or strokes added for the purpose of ornamentation, for adding distinctiveness, or, in some cases, and particularly with business men, with the idea that the flourishes help to secure the signature from forgery. Such writers will probably be surprised to learn that there is no form of signature so easy ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... elicited an animated discussion, and was the occasion of a most interesting address by Mr. Sumner on Art in the Capitol. "Surely this edifice," said he, "so beautiful and interesting, should not be opened to the experiments of untried talent. Only the finished artists should be invited to its ornamentation. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... size it is doubtless the most beautiful of animals, its plumage, especially the magnificent display of the tail, exceeding that of any other natural object. There are other birds of small size which vie with the peacock in the details of ornamentation. Those jewels among the feathered tribes, the humming-birds, have a more delicate beauty. The birds-of-paradise and the lyre-birds have a grace in the attitudes of particular feathers which is unequalled; but ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... branches of Roman industry is one proof more of the continuance of city life in the island; had the British artisans not survived the invasion, there would never have been found in the tombs of the conquerors those glass cups of elaborate ornamentation, hardly distinguishable from the products of the Roman glass-works, and which the clumsy hands of the Saxon were certainly incapable of fusing ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... feet making little plopping sounds on the rug, and seated himself abruptly in the visitor's chair beside Rothwell's desk. He gave a sharp cry, and another alien, shorter, but sporting similar, golden fur, stepped into the office and closed the door. Both wore simple, brown uniforms, without ornamentation. ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... built of stone. Above the stone is brickwork rising to a height of one hundred and twenty feet from the plain. The lower story has niches evidently intended for a figure of Buddha, and below this is a band of sculptured ornaments of great beauty; it is thought from the evidences of ornamentation that in date it corresponds to the best period of Delhi. There is an interesting temple in the vicinity, and there formerly was a large Buddhist monastery. One also finds acres of mounds and debris indicating a large Buddhist foundation in the days ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... sure and rapid decay, and I give not this forth as an opinion but as a thing that I know, seeing it as clearly with my mind, O Fergus, as I see with my eyes thy countenance and form and the foldings of thy fuan [Footnote: Mantle.] and the shape and ornamentation of the wheel- brooch upon thy breast. Without chastity there is no enduring valour in a nation. And thou, too, O Fergus, sitting there in the champion's throne, hast more than once or twice heard me pronounce the dread sentence without word of protest or dissent. But now, because it toucheth ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... that TAINE fell into the common-place idea of the opposition of the brain and thought; he took up again this old idea without endeavouring to analyse it, and only made it his own by the ornamentation of his style. And as his was a mind of powerful systematisation, the error which he committed led him into much wider consequences than the error of a more common mind ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... circumference of the box in several concentric lines, or rings, inside of the ring of pearls. In the center of the box was a cross of ivory, carved so as to be slightly raised above its general surface. Beyond this, the box contained no other ornamentation. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... trifles of inestimable value, and with refined taste and judgment every thing was sought out which luxury and convenience could demand. With childish astonishment and ecstasy, Natalie wandered through these rooms, which she hardly recognized in their splendid ornamentation, and stood before these treasures of trifles which she ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... hurried faster and faster, turned suddenly to the left and found myself, excited and angry, in a light ornate doorway. I did not pause, not for one second, but the whole peculiar ornamentation of the entrance struck on my perception in a flash; every detail of the decoration and the tiling of the floor stood clear on my mental vision as I sprang up the stairs. I rang violently on the second floor. Why should I stop exactly on the second floor? And ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... size; all this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. These round ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... 1600's was an ornate masterpiece of the foundryman's art, covered with escutcheons, floral relief, scrolls, and heavy moldings, the most characteristic of which was perhaps the banded muzzle (figs. 23b-c, 25, 26a-b), that bulbous bit of ornamentation which had been popular with designers since the days of the bombards. The flared or bell-shaped muzzle (figs. 23a, 26c, 27), did not supplant the banded muzzle until the eighteenth century, and, while the flaring bell is a usual characteristic ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... black in colour, and the ornamentation of it consists of incised geometrical designs. Copper and bronze, where we find examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed in the manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... engravings, and old family jewelry lying on tables—the whole presenting the appearance of the ornamentation of a church. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their courtship? And this would be the case, unless the females exert some choice and select those males which please or excite them most. If the female exerts such choice, all the above facts on the ornamentation of the males become at once intelligible by ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that early day has been removed and in its place a modern one has been erected, but by some happy inspiration of the builders the new church is devoid of the garish ornamentation that is too often found in churches. Harmonious coloring, artistic beauty, make it a fitting place ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... shorn hair they wore [6]and manes on the back of their heads,[6] [7]fair, comely indeed.[7] Dark-blue cloaks they all had about them. Next to their skin, gleaming-white tunics, [LL.fo.55b.] [8]with red ornamentation, reaching down to their calves.[8] Swords they had with round hilts of gold and silvern fist-guards, [9]and shining shields upon them and five-pronged spears in their hands.[9] "Is yonder man Cormac?" all the people asked. "Nay, verily, that is ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design itself as an essential part of good workmanship. During the last century most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a mere matter of appearance. Such "ornamentation" as there was was usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in production. With the critical attention given to the crafts by Ruskin and Morris, it ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... bright, highly polished silver, with its own natural and unmatchable color, has come in. The salvers afford a splendid surface for a monogram, which is now copied from the old Dutch silver, and bears many a true-lovers' knot, and every sort and kind of ornamentation; sometimes even a little verse, or posy, as it was called in olden time. One tea-caddy at a recent wedding bore the following almost obsolete rhyme, which Corydon might have sent to ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... and refinement, and its execution to hands exceptionally skilled in many of those arts and sciences that are the heritage of ages of civilisation. The architecture was massive, almost heroic in its proportions, and its ornamentation was severe yet graceful, with a very strong and marked suggestion of Egyptian influence. The gardens were elaborately terraced, and consisted for the most part of wide, smooth, grassy lawns thickly dotted with flower beds cut into graceful ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... artistically-worked wrought-iron will be represented by a cast-iron substitute of much more elaborate device; and there will probably be "piled on," here and there, an amount of cheap ornamentation which at the first glance will have a certain imposing effect. In the matter of planting there may be an amount and variety of foreign shrubbery and sub-tropical plants, which, under proper care, would be of great ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... called gold spoons, although they were of silver- gilt. These costly decorations of the White House were described in detail, with many humorous comments, and then contrasted with the log-cabins of the West, where the only ornamentation, generally speaking, was a string of speckled birds'-eggs festooned about a looking-glass measuring eight by ten inches, and a fringed window curtain of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... one of those women who always are in and nearly always are alone. Immediately, then, they sat in her front room, which was her best room. Her sewing machine was there, and her biggest oil lamp and her few small sticks of company furniture, her few scraps of parlor ornamentation; a bad picture or two, gaudily framed; china vases on a mantel-shelf; two golden-oak rockers, wearing on their slick and shiny frontlets the brand of an installment-house Cain who murdered beauty and yet failed in his designings to achieve comfort. It was as hot as a Dutch oven, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... accommodation. Here the billiard-table is old-fashioned, perhaps a trifle crooked; but you have Guercino above your head, and Guercino, after all, is almost as good as Guido. The rooms, I noticed, all pleased by their shape, by a lovely proportion, by a mass of delicate ornamentation on the high concave ceilings. One might live over again in them some deliciously benighted life of a forgotten type—with graceful old sale, and immensely thick walls, and a winding stone staircase, and a view from the loggia at the top; a view of twisted parasol-pines balanced, high above ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... which are easily distinguished by finely executed and beautiful decorative designs in low relief on their backs; whereas her own mirrors—occasionally of iron—did not show equal skill of technique or ornamentation. Comparative roughness distinguished them, and they had often a garniture of jingle-bells (suzu) cast around the rim, a feature not found in Chinese mirrors. They were, in fact, an inferior copy of a Chinese prototype, the kinship of the two being further attested by the common use of the dragon ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... The ornamentation of printed books is too wide a subject to be dealt with fully here; but one thing must be said on it. The essential point to be remembered is that the ornament, whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, should form part of the page, should be ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... Cervantes we came suddenly upon the superb facade of the university. This is one of the most exquisite compositions of plateresque in existence. The entire front of the central body of the building is covered with rich and tasteful ornamentation. Over the great door is an enormous escutcheon of the arms of Austria, supported by two finely carved statues,—on the one side a nearly nude warrior, on the other the New World as a feather-clad Indian woman. Still above ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... ever-present, explaining everything. It has been possible to compare these systems with the architecture of the Gothic cathedrals, in which the dominant idea is incessantly repeated in the numberless details of the construction, and in the branching multiplicity of ornamentation. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... each of whom should furnish two hundred ducats, which he deemed would amount to a sufficient sum for the expenses of founding the colony. The knights were to wear a dress of white cloth, marked on the breast with a red cross, similar to the cross of Calatrava, but with some additional ornamentation. The purpose of this costume was to distinguish them in the eyes of the Indians from ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... The ornamentation of this box is both novel and tasteful. It is embroidered in coloured silks, upon light blue cashmere. Part of the embroidery pattern is given in full size. All the outlines are worked in overcast, the stitches being made rather long ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... have to teach us regarding the enjoyment of such social functions. A perfect din and rattle of plates and knives filled the air, a mob of undisciplined servants charged about tumultuously, garish lights lit up vulgar ornamentation, and one almost had to shout to be heard across the table, while a band of music outside ineffectually endeavoured to drown the din within. There were flowers, it is true, but their profusion was no compensation for an utter ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... columns, and piazzas twenty-five feet in width. The wealthy Spaniard or Cuban wastes no money in beautifying the outside of his house, because, standing as it does on a narrow, dirty street, it cannot be made attractive or imposing by any possible method of architectural treatment; but upon the ornamentation and embellishment of the patio, or interior court, he lavishes all his taste and skill. The patio of the Anglo-American Club was not nearly as large and attractive as the courtyards of private residences ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... though less grand, are more beautiful. Most of the graceful Ionic columns are still standing, but large portions of the roof and entablature have fallen. Fragments of decorated cornice strew the ground, some of them of considerable length, and afford a near view of that delicate ornamentation and exquisite finish so rare outside the limits of Greece. The elevated porch of the Caryatides, lately restored by the substitution of a new figure in place of the missing statue now in the British Museum, attracts attention as a unique specimen of Greek art, and also as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... representing the endless sky and a gold sun with 32 rays soaring above a golden steppe eagle in the center; on the hoist side is a "national ornamentation" in yellow ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the "Requiem aeternam" spoken—all was over. Those assembled shook hands quietly with Heliobas, saluted each other, and gradually dispersed. I entered a carriage and drove back to the Hotel Mars, leaving Heliobas in the cemetery to give his final instructions for the ornamentation and decoration of his ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... description by Murillo Velarde (Hist. Philipinas, fol. 195 v.-198) of this "magnificent temple." He says that its dimensions were 204 x 90 feet; and that it was surmounted by two towers, inclosing the facade—for which he apologizes, as loaded with inappropriate ornamentation; but it is, nevertheless, "a shell worthy of the pearl which it encloses." It was planned by Father Juan Antonio Campion (who died in 1651), and was built of stone obtained from "the vicinity of Antipolo;" this doubtless refers to the marble-quarries ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... jail was a small, two-story brick building, strongly constructed, with no attempt at architectural ornamentation. Each story was divided into two large cells by a passage running from front to rear. A grated iron door gave entrance from the passage to each of the four cells. The jail seldom had many prisoners in it, and the lower windows had been boarded up. When ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... had rearranged his scarcely disordered toilette, and stepped out refreshed and observant into the hall. The guests were still absent from that part of the building, and he walked leisurely past the carelessly opened doors of the rooms they had left. Everywhere he met the same glaring ornamentation and color, the same garishness of treatment, the same inharmonious extravagance of furniture, and everywhere the same troubled acceptance of it by the inmates, or the same sense of temporary and restricted tenancy. Dresses were hung over cheval glasses; clothes piled up on chairs ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters, whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration from ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... unfamiliar one to the young engineer, but he glanced about him with quickened interest. The walls of the huge room, like the exterior, were painted a garish blue, the floor bare but scrubbed clean, and the chairs and tables had been obviously selected with a view to utility and strength rather than ornamentation. No attempt had been made to render the place attractive and in this Gentleman Geoff's psychology was sound; Limasito wanted its play, like ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... with carvings. The pots sitting by the fire, show no decoration nor do the other household utensils exhibit embellishment of any kind. A closer study of the field baskets, however, shows a slight attempt to produce ornamentation by changing the weave of the central band from that at the top and bottom, or by adding a few rude lines in pitch. The moment the people enter, however, all is changed. The clothing they wear is covered with intricate patterns, some realistic, others highly conventionalized (Plate XXXI). Wonderful ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... or less blackened by use. This ware is of precisely the same character and quality as the black pottery from Santa Clara. The pitchers, cups, and basins are evidently modeled after introduced patterns from civilized nations. All are without ornamentation. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson
... Padre Doyaguez, she suddenly turns upon him and says, "Sir, you are a Doctrinary and a Propagandist." And the good Father suffers her to depart in peace. But first there is the chapel to be seen, with its tawdry and poor ornamentation,—and the dormitories of the scholars, with long double rows of beds and mosquito-nettings. There are two of these, and each of them has at one end a raised platform, with curtains and a bed, where rests and watches the shepherd of the little sheep. Lastly, we have a view of the whole flock, assembled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... courses for a while take the place of one.[441] There is a want of care in the arrangement of the blocks, joints in one course being occasionally directly over joints in the course below it. The stones are without any bevel or ornamentation of any kind. They have been quarried in the island itself, and the beds of rock from which they were taken may be seen at no great distance. At one point in the western side of the island, the native rock itself has been cut into the shape of the wall, and made to take ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... does not believe in ornament, and this glimpse of character might be uttered in one sentence. Perhaps, however, a tendency to ornamentation might have made the poem at least decorative. After all, when one has emerged from the rarefied atmosphere of the Imagist, the Symbolist, and the vers librist, one swims into the splendours of Francis Thompson as one might take refuge from ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... shuttered with slabs of oak, secured, inside, by square bars of ash. All of the furniture excepting one bed, a table, and two chairs was home-made, and consequently rather primitive in style, and built more for use than for ornamentation. ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... broad one from the very start. He was not content merely to provide a roomy, moderately priced house that should be fireproof, waterproof, and vermin-proof, and practically indestructible, but has been solicitous to get away from the idea of a plain "packing-box" type. He has also provided for ornamentation of a high class in designing the details of the structure. As he expressed it: "We will give the workingman and his family ornamentation in their house. They deserve it, and besides, it costs no more ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... matter over, and, Providence aiding us, we fixed upon a plan. For the ornamentation of the town a new statue had just been cast. I forget of whom it was a statue. I only remember that in the essentials it was the usual sort of street statue, representing the usual sort of gentleman, with the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... Here, instead of handles such as we should have made to pull these movable partitions, they have made little oval-holes, just the shape of a finger-end, into which one is evidently to put one's thumb. These little holes have a bronze ornamentation, and, on looking closely, one sees that the bronze is curiously chased: here is a lady fanning herself; there, in the next hole, is represented a branch of cherry in full blossom. What eccentricity there is in the taste of this people! To bestow assiduous labor on such miniature work, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... houses in Fifth Avenue, but which, while differing in many respects, have a certain general resemblance, that places them all in the same category. The small old country churches of Essex County are not distinguished for fine carving or other ornamentation, and still less by the costliness of their material, for they are mostly built of white pine, but they have an indefinable air of pleasantness about them, as if they graced the ground they stand on, and their steeples seem to float in the air above us. If ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... went puffing down the Ohio, in 1811, would have been doubly amazed at the splendid development in the art of boat building, could they have seen the stately Sultana or Southern Belle of the fifties sweep swiftly by. After a period of gaudy ornamentation (1830-40) steamboat architecture settled down, as has that of Pullman cars today, to sane and practical lines, and the boats gained in length and strength, though they contained less weight of timber. The value of one of the greater boats of this era would be about fifty thousand dollars. When ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... terra cotta figures laid among the brickwork furnishes a field of architectural design hardly appreciated. The heavy mass of brick, divided by regular lines of demarkation, serves as the groundwork of such ornamentation, while the suitable introduction in the proper places of the same material in terra cotta imparts the most appropriate elements of beauty in design; for clay in both forms shows alike its capacity for utility and decoration. The absorption of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... the past has come a vast array of period windows, each one of which is of interest. They display an unmistakable relationship to one another, for while we acknowledge that they differ in detail and ornamentation, yet do they invariably show in their conception some underlying unity. There is no more fascinating study than to take each one separately and carefully analyze its every detail, for thus only can we recognize ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... with the chief. Examining the chief's pockets. Finding a photograph of George and Harry. Hunting the pockets of the slain warriors. The match box. John's startled look. The monogram. Human hair. Its part in ornamentation. Scalps. Customs connected with human hair. Going forward. Surrounded by the warriors. The running fight. The yaks beyond control. The flight. The savages trying to outflank them. Warriors on all sides. The river in sight. A ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... these sculptures, particularly in the marbles. The statues of Livia, of Drusus, and of Eumachia, are but moderately good; those discovered in the temples, such as Isis, Bacchus, Venus, etc., have not come down from the Parthenon. The decline of taste makes itself apparent in the latest ornamentation of the tombs and edifices, and the decorative work of the houses, the marble embellishments; and, above all, those executed in stucco become overladen and tawdry, heavy and labored, toward the last. Nevertheless, they reveal, if not a great aesthetic feeling, ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Bartolommeo under Antonio and Squarcione. But there was something fierce and uncongenial about Crivelli which takes him out of the main body of Venetian painters, and seems to have given him more pride in being made a knight than in his pictorial achievements, remarkable as they were. In his ornamentation of every detail with gold and jewels he recalls the style of Antonio Vivarini, but while the master used it as accessory merely, Crivelli positively revelled in it. An inventory of the precious stones, ornaments, fruits and flowers, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... fragments of human bones, which evidently belonged only to one individual, as no portion was duplicated; also a few animals' bones. There was an extraordinary number of fragments of pottery, belonging to about 24 different urns, of which 11 could be put together. Their form and ornamentation were both fine and varied, an interesting witness to the ceramics of the grey past.... Among the stone implements found were a great many flint-knives; two stone hatchets, two chisels, and a gouge, all of ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie |
