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Tapestry   Listen
verb
Tapestry  v. t.  (past & past part. tapestried; pres. part. tapestrying)  To adorn with tapestry, or as with tapestry. "The Trosachs wound, as now, between gigantic walls of rock tapestried with broom and wild roses."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tapestry" Quotes from Famous Books



... Edgerton beneath the medieval tapestry of the Pumpelly marble hall glanced at the dirty sheet in James' hand and, though unfamiliar with the form of the document, perceived it to be a summons issued on the application of one Henry J. Goldsmith and returnable next day, for violating Section Two Hundred and Fifteen of Article Twelve ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... door—looking like a section of solid brick and plaster wall—was closing slowly—heavily. Through the opening which yet remained he caught a glimpse of a small room, draped with Chinese dragon tapestry and having upon a raised, carpeted dais a number of cushions forming a diwan and an inlaid table bearing a silver snuff vase. A cowled figure was seated upon the dais. The door closed completely. Within a niche in its centre ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... floors, and wainscoted rooms. Charles II. lodged here in 1660, and he subsequently presented to his host, Sir Francis Clarke, several large tapestries, representing pastoral scenes, which the present owner kindly allowed us to see. The tapestry is said to have been made at Mortlake. It was the usual present from royalty in those days—just as Her present Majesty now gives an Indian shawl to a favoured subject. Like many houses of its kind, it contains a secret staircase for escape during ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... had gone—I knew not what. At the first indication of gloom in me, my father became alarmed, and, after making me stand with my tongue out before himself and Mrs. Waddy, like a dragon in a piece of tapestry, would resume his old playfulness, and try to be the same that he had been in Mrs. Waddy's lodgings. Then we read the Arabian Nights together, or, rather, he read them to me, often acting out the incidents as we rode or drove abroad. An omission ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his foot.[2] Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground; he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.[3] For the Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders; within it he ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... how I should know what you do or do not do. It is simple. I shall be the harmless but observant witness of your interview. Over this doorway hangs a tapestry; you will grant me the privilege—not a great one for a future ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... occasion where I might have been called upon to speak, yet I was really grateful to my poor nurse for her blessing. The state tower, in which, after reiterated entreaties, I was at last left alone to repose, was hung with magnificent, but ancient tapestry. It was so like a room in a haunted castle, that if I had not been too much fatigued to think of any thing, I should certainly have thought of Mrs. Radcliffe. I am sorry to say that I have no mysteries, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... passing through its many rooms, seeing here and there a half-finished piece of tapestry; and meeting a number of the members of the late Peace Congress, who, like myself had remained behind to see more of the beauties of the French capital than could be overtaken during the Convention week. I accepted an invitation to dine ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... we pass'd, was so delightful, that it gave us a great deal of Satisfaction. About Three a Clock, we reach'd the Town, and the Indians presently brought us good fat Bear, and Venison, which was very acceptable at that time. Their Cabins were hung with a good sort of Tapestry, as fat Bear, and barbakued or dried Venison; no Indians having greater Plenty of Provisions than these. The Savages do, indeed, still possess the Flower of Carolina, the English enjoying only the Fag-end of that fine Country. We had ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... sweep; and since they cannot set about it themselves, they give their confidence to any one who comes with a besom in his hand. Oh, it seems to me as if I saw the king and his council worked upon this tapestry. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... broiders the image of his good wife. Again the miracle is repeated, "Let there be light!" Here is not only the subtle equilibrium between man and the things that surround him, but the things themselves—flesh-tints, drapery, garbs, polished floor, chairs, table, and wall tapestry—are saturated with light; absorbed by the inert matter which nevertheless vibrates and, like the flesh-tones, remains puissant ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... Thus then he did: he charged the eunuch constantly to attend and accompany the conspirators wherever they were; in the meanwhile, he broke down the party-wall of the chamber behind his bed, and placed a door in it to open and shut, which covered up with tapestry; so the hour approaching, and the eunuch having told him the precise time in which the traitors designed to assassinate him, he waited for them in his bed, and rose not up till he had seen the faces of his assailants and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... room did not appear so attractive in the light of a dark December morning, aided by one flickering candle upon the dressing- table. The tapestry was worn into holes, the carpet was threadbare, and the silk curtains had faded to a dull grey hue. The general aspect was so grim and dull, both within the room and outside in the wind-swept park, that the sun-loving Mademoiselle made all speed she could ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... came in again, bringing me a noble dish of breakfast, a pigeon pie, a ham, a jar of preserved quince, a honeycomb, a great household loaf, newly baked, a big quart jug full of small beer. I made a very honest meal. After eating, I examined the room. There was tapestry over one part of the wall. It concealed a little low door which led to what had once been the abbot's fishpond, now a roofed-in bath-house, where one could plunge into eight feet or so of (bitterly cold) ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... Walls, Ceilings and Floors. Treatment and Decoration of Walls. Use of Tapestry. Leather and Wall-Papers. Panels of Wood, ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... a small room, scantily furnished, with the same marks of neglect and decay which met us at every turn. The walls were hung with discoloured tapestry, which had come loose at one corner, so as to expose the rough stonework behind. A second door, hung with a curtain, faced us upon the other side. Between lay a square table, strewn with dirty dishes and the sordid ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... women of our house have been beautifying it since its inception. You may have observed that the statuary is very old. No such work has been done for ages. Modern art has developed along the lines of color and motion, hence the lighting effects and the tapestry wall. Each gem is held upon the end of a minute pencil of force, and all the pencils are controlled by a machine which has a key for every jewel in ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... American (the respectable one) does not take a deep interest in what they call "politics," and why he is so vaguely and generally proud of the country that enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently hissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... tapestried room into which the brothers were conducted, sat the Black Lady of Brabant on a throne elevated considerably above the floor. The dais was covered with the same rich tapestry as the hangings which covered the walls, for even in this early age Bruges was celebrated for such manufactures. The draperies of the throne were of purple velvet fringed with gold, with a canopy and curtains of the same rich materials, the latter being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... pleasure-loving, others too much preoccupied with their personal interests not to neglect yours; whereas women think of you, if only from idleness. Speak this evening to one of them of some affair that concerns you; tomorrow at her wheel, at her tapestry, you will find her dreaming of it, and searching in her head for some ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... sometimes as coverings for the backs of camels, horses, or asses, to render the rider's seat less incommodious; sometimes as a bed coverlid, or counterpane; at other times as sacks for carrying articles of value; or finally as curtains, hangings of parlors, occasionally tapestry, or even as ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... together. Every morning now for three weeks and more (for to-day is Thursday and I started on a Tuesday) I have been trying to convey some idea of the factors and early influences by which my particular scrap of subjective tapestry was shaped, to show the child playing on the nursery floor, the son perplexed by his mother, gazing aghast at his dead father, exploring interminable suburbs, touched by first intimations of the sexual mystery, coming in with a sort of confused avidity ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... looking round, they came to the great chamber, which was all hung round with fair tapestry, and they perceived the brown bread, the horse's skin, and a pair of breeches hanging there; at which they were much astonished, and asked their ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... foyer was splendor to grace a palace hall. There were great carved chairs. There was a massive oaken table. There were rugs, there were hangings, there were dim-shaded lamps casting a soft glow upon tapestry and velours. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... warriors hang as if self-supported between earth and sky. Then come groves of columns that in girth and height might rival the noblest oaks. Every pillar and every part of the wall is so crowded with sculptures that the whole temple seems hung with petrified tapestry. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue,—the landscape like a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... In Scotland. I took one more walk through Holyrood House, the mansion of ancient kings. But how melancholy an appearance does it make now! The stately rooms are dirty as stables; the colours of the tapestry are quite faded; several of the pictures are cut and defaced. The roof of the royal chapel is fallen in; and the bones of James V., and the once beautiful Lord Dankley, are scattered about like those of sheep or oxen. Such is human ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... to Perpendicular. There are in the chancel two freestone effigies, perhaps of the 14th century, besides three sedilia, and a piscina under arches. Axminster was long celebrated for the admirable quality of its carpets, which were woven by hand, like tapestry. Their manufacture was established in 1755. Their name is preserved, but since the seat of this industry was removed to Wilton near Salisbury, the inhabitants of Axminster have found employment in brush factories, corn ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... before our era, he was careful not to omit in the decoration of the sanctuary the marvels of textile art which had been the chief embellishment of the tabernacle during the long wanderings in the desert. Before the doors of the most sacred place he hung a Babylonian tapestry fifty cubits high by sixteen wide: azure and flax, scarlet and purple were blended in it with admirable art and rare ingenuity, for these represented the various elements. Scarlet signified fire; linen, the earth; azure, the air; and purple, the ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... Horn. The Grandjunction Canal, Venis, by Candleetty; and Italian Bandix, by Slavata Rosa.'—And so this worthy woman went on, from one room into another, from the blue room to the green, and the green to the grand saloon, and the grand saloon to the tapestry closet, cackling her list of pictures and wonders: and furtively turning up a corner of brown holland to show the colour of the old, faded, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and shading the candle with her hand, she stole past the partly open door. A rich tapestry curtain hung at the other side, and Maggie doubtless ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... of the houses were dressed with pieces of tapestry and white flags, which appeared to my view nothing more than sheets and table-cloths. The Garde Nationale lined the streets, and by the acclamations of, "Vive Louis le Dix-huit, Louis le Desire, les Bourbons!" and other cries, all foreigners who ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... hunting-party, Always provided, old books showed the way of it! What meant old poets by their strictures? And when old poets had said their say of it, {230} How taught old painters in their pictures? We must revert to the proper channels, Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Or best ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... proffered me the choice of one, saying: "See what thy master hath provided thee!" I took one of them eagerly, for I perceived at once that they were two of the very weapons that were let down from Heaven in the cloudy veil, the dim tapestry of the firmament; and I said to myself. "Surely this is the will ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... general wedding, all entreated the poet's lady to consent to crown his love with marriage; she yielded; the bridal was splendidly celebrated; and to the sound of marvellous music the poet awoke, to find neither lady nor creature — but only old portraitures on the tapestry, of horsemen, hawks, and hounds, and hurt deer full of wounds. Great was his grief that he had lost all the bliss of his dream; and he concludes by praying his lady so to accept his love-service, that the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... remained for about half an hour, seeing and hearing nothing. At last a door, concealed by the tapestry, was suddenly opened; a voice uttered the word "Enter," and the two women were introduced into a second room, hung with black, and lighted solely by a three-branched lamp that hung from the ceiling. The door closed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... were covered with grotesquely and elaborately figured hand-wrought tapestry. The musty ancient beds remained in the chambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors. There was enough crazy and rotten rubbish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... make the people discontented, because this would have been considered as flying in the face of Providence; and there was, besides, a sort of nebulous hope, not strong enough for a theory, that by dint of long gazing upon vases and tapestry everybody would in time acquire a true feeling for art, and begin to crave for culture. Many very beautiful things have, from time to time, been sent there—pictures, collections, priceless vases; and I am sure that ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... door of the vaulted chamber he called his "den." It was sparingly furnished, and bore no likeness to the sort of smoking divan an undergrad of the tone of Ralph would affect now in Oxford. Plain stove, floor strewn with rushes, rude tapestry around the walls, with those uncouth faces and figures worked thereon which give antiquarians a low idea of the personal appearance of the people of the day, a solid table, upon which a bear might dance without breaking it, two or ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... piece, in which are represented some of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... amidst his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor, rotten Constitution of his native country. For her, he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House,—to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach, some other houses, but with real, solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. Paul Benfield made (reckoning himself) no fewer than eight members in the last Parliament. What copious streams of pure blood must he not have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the bite long and well, and then swallowing it with a wonderful up and down gliding of his knobby Adam's apple. From time to time he turned his head and looked at the walls of the dining-room. The time was Saturday noon, and but one wall was covered with the new wall-paper, a natural forest tapestry paper, with lifelike representations of leafy trees. He had promised to have the Pilker dining-room completed by Saturday night. It seemed quite impossible to Philo Gubb that he could finish the Pilker dining-room before dark, and it ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... corridor, over which he tripped in the dark, and on one occasion, while dressed for the part of 'Black Isaac, or the Huntsman of Hogley Woods,' he met with a severe fall, through treading on a butter-slide, which the twins had constructed from the entrance of the Tapestry Chamber to the top of the oak staircase. This last insult so enraged him, that he resolved to make one final effort to assert his dignity and social position, and determined to visit the insolent young Etonians the ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... on the upper floor, in a room comfortably furnished from the palace. It was hung with six pieces of tapestry, and the floor was partly covered by an Eastern carpet. It contained, besides the handsome bed—which once had belonged to the Queen's mother—a couple of high chairs in purple velvet, a little table with a green velvet cover, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... Early Victorian portraits; gone the big glass cases of stuffed birds and weasels; gone the round mahogany table, the waxen bouquets, and the horsehair chairs. The ancient tapestry beside the carven balustrade of the staircase remained, but it had been ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... things long (as if the thread in the tapestry should marvel at its devious windings) ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... One of the most beautiful of the town's possessions is the old Jacobi house and garden, rescued from sale and disturbance by the patriotic artist-guild, who bought it and gave the garden to the public, while the house where Goethe visited his friend Jacobi became a museum of pictures, panelling, tapestry, native and foreign art-relics, etc., all open to the public. The gardens, with their hidden pools and marble statues, their water-lilies and overarching trees, their glades and lawns, have an Italian look, like some parts of the Villa Borghese near Rome, whose groves of ilexes are famous; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... one string went on, and naturally sounded louder as Roy Royland opened a door to stand gazing in at the quaint octagonal room, lit by windows splayed to admit more light to the snug quarters hung with old tapestry, and made cosy with thick carpet and easy-chair, and intellectual with dwarf book-cases filled with choice works. These had overflowed upon the floor, others being piled upon the tops of chairs and stacked in corners wherever room could be found, while some were even ranged ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... a charming little room, furnished 'en buhl,' with a painted ceiling and walls, and a rosewood floor. It opened into a boudoir, fitted up with white cashmere, beautifully embroidered with groups of flowers, and hung with tapestry of exquisite workmanship. Beyond the boudoir was a bedroom, painted blue, hung with curtains of silk and lace, and with a sumptuous bed in an alcove. A fire burned on the hearth, and a dozen perfumed ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... rewards and punishments; employed his riches in the architecture of palaces and temples; and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India, Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the oriental artists. A general indulgence was proclaimed; every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people was free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of Timur may remark that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... like to tapestry; and like it, when it was spread it showed its figures, but when it was folded up, hid and spoiled them.—Apophthegms of Kings and Great ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... behind the tapestry forming the portiere, and Angela calls, "Is it you, Mirette? what do ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... returning from his ride in the Bois, by chance passed the Avenue Maillot. Madame Lescande was embroidering on the balcony, by chance, and returned his salute over her tapestry. He remarked, too, that she saluted very gracefully, by a slight inclination of the head, followed by a slight movement ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... more to be done. Dr. Knott had gone out of the red drawing-room on the ground floor into the tapestry-hung dining-room next door, which struck cold as the small hours drew on towards the dawn. And Julius March, after reciting the prayer in which the Anglican Church commends the souls of her departing children ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... o'clock arrived the two latter contrived to make an excuse to go upstairs, and hastily completed their preparations. The arrangements were ingenious. They fastened their rat very lightly by two pieces of thin sewing cotton to the middle of the piece of tapestry that formed the roof of the great four-post bed. To the cotton was attached a long strand of string, which passed through the curtains and out at the door (conveniently near the bed), the end being hidden under the mat ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... was a magnificent long room, whose fine old mirrors, that were cracked by pistol bullets, and whose Flemish tapestry, which was cut to ribbons, and hanging in rags in places, from sword-cuts, told too well what Mademoiselle Fifi's occupation was ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... I sleep, and, when I open my eyes, he is no longer near me. I run swiftly up the narrow stairs and along the silent corridor. The tapestry is drawn aside, and the hidden door stands open, and in the room beyond the friend that I loved is kneeling before an open chest, and the glint of the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... suited to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as if petrified, her face expressed profound tranquillity. Hermann stopped before her, and gazed long and earnestly at her, as if he wished to convince himself of the terrible reality. At last he entered the cabinet, felt behind the tapestry for the door, and then began to descend the dark staircase, filled with strange emotions. "Down this very staircase," thought he, "perhaps coming from the very same room, and at this very same hour sixty years ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... of the Band of the Forty-Five who rose at my entrance and looked at me dubiously. Their guard-room, dimly illumined by a lamp of red glass, seemed to me, in spite of its curtains and velvet bench, and the thick tapestry which kept out every breath of wholesome air, the most sombre I could imagine. And the most ill-omened. But I had no time to make any long observation; for Revol, passing me brusquely, raised the curtain at the other end, and, with his finger on his ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... the mouth, (which is the antechamber, as we said before,) is a sort of lobby, separated from the mouth by a little fleshy tonguelet, suspended to the palate, exactly like those tapestry curtains which are sometimes hung between two rooms, under which one is enabled to pass, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... midday the haunted circle widened; rocks were loosely folded in it, and heads of trees, whose round intervolving roots grasped the yellow roadside soil; the mists shook like a curtain, and partly opened and displayed a tapestry-landscape, roughly worked, of woollen crag and castle and suggested glen, threaded waters, very prominent foreground, Autumn flowers on banks; a predominant atmospheric greyness. The sun threw a shaft, liquid instead of burning, as we see his beams beneath a wave; and then the mists narrowed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that herds us together with other comers, and shepherds us all briskly through the official round, goes very far toward killing it. There is little that one needs to remember of the successive rooms and halls; it is a confusion of polished floors, and vases, and tapestry, and porphyry tables, and the rest,—adorned and illumined by a voluble Gallic description. Later French kings have restored the old building, and stocked it with Paris furniture, and made it modern and comfortable. One is always divided in spirit over these restorations. The castle needed help ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... slightly at the deliberate rudeness of the action, but did not press the request. She left the room, softly closing the door behind her. She walked slowly along the wide passage, hung with bugle tapestry, and paused for a while at a narrow window at the end of the gallery, looking out on the terrace gardens and soft green landscape beyond. The interview with her nephew's wife had tried her, and her reflections were rather bitter. For the twentieth time she asked herself why her nephew had fallen ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... swiftly to the lower rim of the shoulder, and Frederic followed. Down the slope his sisters and Banks seemed to be moving through a film. They mingled with it indistinctly as the figures in faded tapestry. But Morganstein laid his hand on her arm to detain her. "What's your hurry?" he asked thickly. "All we got to do now is keep their trail. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... elaboration in the mounting of plays as destructive of the real spirit of the actor's art. Betterton had to meet this reproach when he introduced scenery in lieu of linsey-woolsey curtains; but he replied, sensibly enough, that his scenery was better than the tapestry with hideous figures worked upon it which had so long distracted the senses of play-goers. He might have asked his critics whether they wished to see Ophelia played by a boy of sixteen, as in the time of Shakespeare, instead of a beautiful and gifted ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... reportorial habit of asking questions, peeping into private nooks, and making notes upon contemporary things, just as I had done for three years, in cities, on routes, on battle-fields. And as the old world seemed to me only a great art museum, I longed to look behind the tapestry at the Ghobelin weavers, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... momentarily to give Cora the history of a faded Flemish tapestry that lay in a cabinet, and then included them both in the romantic tale of a Murillo, unearthed in a Mexican pawnshop, which she assumed would interest so steadfast a champion of art as the governor ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... world like a ball in our hands. How cheap even the liberty then seems; how mean to study, when an emotion communicates to the intellect the power to sap and upheave nature; how great the perspective! nations, times, systems, enter and disappear like threads in tapestry of large figure and many colors; dream delivers us to dream, and while the drunkenness lasts we will sell our bed, our philosophy, our religion, in ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... and umbrellas and standards, and steeds and cars and elephants, and with diverse kinds of blankets, and reins of steeds, and beautiful robes and costly Varuthas (of cars), look, as if overspread with embroidered tapestry. Many warriors fallen from the backs of well-equipped elephants along with those creatures themselves that they had ridden, are looking like lions fallen from mountain summits struck down by thunder. Mingled with the steeds (they had ridden) and the bows (they had held), ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... against it. Some walked with him in the long hall of portraits and narrated the brave deeds of his ancestors. Some explained to him the history of the heirlooms, and showed him how each vessel of silver and great carved chair and richly faded tapestry had a meaning which made ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... in search of Lovat, and he soon found that it was no longer safe to remain in the vicinity of Beaufort. He fled, in the first instance, to Cawdor Castle. In this famous structure, with its iron-grated doors, its ancient tapestry hanging over secret passages and obscure approaches, he took refuge. In one of its towers, in a small low chamber beneath the roof, the wretched old man concealed himself for some months. When he was at last obliged to quit it, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... to the safety of the tapestry curtain which hung in the doorway. There for a little while he conducted an innocent bystander business, which presently ended in disaster. Up to the moment, the Mud Turtle had been silent, but now from his throat came a yelp which drowned ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... were therefore born out of wedlock. On the other hand, the idol-worshippers would fain have Napoleon born as a god or Titan. Premature pangs seize the mother at church. She hurries home, barely reaching her apartment when the heroic babe is delivered, without an accoucheur, on a piece of tapestry inwrought with an effigy of Achilles! This probably occurred. It was the 15th of ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... conjectured so, from the noise they made, and the sonorous bumps they gave in sitting down; but when, in weariness of the obstinate green curtain that would not draw up, but would stare at me with two odd eyes, seen through holes, as in the old tapestry story, I would fain have looked round at the merry chattering people behind me, Miss Pole clutched my arm, and begged me not to turn, for "it was not the thing." What "the thing" was, I never could find out, but it must have been something eminently dull and tiresome. However, we all ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... hempen widow on the subject of rope. But nature, which the crooked, the bandy-legged, the blind, and the ugly abuse so unmercifully here below, and have no more esteem for her than the well-favoured,—since, like workers of tapestry, they know not what they do,—gives the same appetite to all and to all the same mouth for pudding. So every beast finds a mate, and from the same fact comes the proverb, "There is no pot, however ugly, that does not one day find a cover." Now the lord of ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... was christened at Paris, January 15, 1622. His family consisted of decent burghers, who had for two or three generations followed the business of manufacturers of tapestry, or dealers in that commodity. Jean Poquelin, the father of the poet, also enjoyed the office of valet-de-chambre in the royal household. He endeavored to bring his son up to the same business, but finding that it was totally inconsistent with the taste and temper of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... Clemenceau had become the favorite at the chateau; and, tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... answered—"That any one could confirm it, for the whole castle was filled with workmen making preparations for their reception; the bridal chamber had been hung with new tapestry, and painters and carvers were busy all day long painting and carving the united arms of Pomerania and Brunswick upon all the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... my own. I always dined in the middle of the day (and invariably on a mutton-chop, so that I might have been a Harrow boy, for diet); I was taken by my aunt early to the theater, and there in my dressing-room sat through the entire play, when I was not on the stage, with some piece of tapestry or needlework, with which, during the intervals of my tragic sorrows, I busied my fingers; my thoughts being occupied with the events of my next scene and the various effects it demanded. When I was called for the stage, my aunt came with me, carrying my train, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... and industry. During this time and under the following reigns, known as those of the Six Boy-Kings, the social side of life had an opportunity to develop from a semi-barbarous to a more civilized state. The bare and rough walls of hall and court were screened by tapestry hangings, often of silk, and elaborately ornamented with birds and flowers or scenes from the battlefield or the chase. Chairs and tables were skilfully carved and inlaid with different woods and, among the wealthier nobility, often decorated with gold and silver. Knives ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... of King Henry's building are the gatehouse, some turrets, a mantelpiece in the presence chamber, which bears the initials H. and A. (Henry and Anne Boleyn) with a true lovers' knot, the Chapel Royal (which has, of course, been renovated), and the tapestry-room. Levees are still held at ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... arms deep fertile wooded valleys called combes (pronounced coomes), watered by trout and salmon streams, and filled with an Italian profusion of vegetation, myrtles and fuchsias, growing in the open air, and the walls hidden with a luxuriant tapestry of ferns and ivies and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... canon whose westerly wall is colored in the dull rich colors, the fantastic patterns of a Moorish tapestry. Umber, seal brown, red, terra-cotta, orange, Nile green, emerald, purple, cobalt blue, gray, lilac, and many other colors, all rich with the depth of satin, glow wonderful as the craftiest textures. Only here ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... things of life are transmuted into artistic conventions, and the things that Life has not are invented and fashioned for her delight. But wherever we have returned to Life and Nature, our work has always become vulgar, common and uninteresting. Modern tapestry, with its aerial effects, its elaborate perspective, its broad expanses of waste sky, its faithful and laborious realism, has no beauty whatsoever. The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We are beginning to weave possible carpets ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... own age and way of thinking were of a rank too far below their own to be made intimate friends of. These ladies duly attended divine service in the royal chapel; and they did a great deal of embroidery and tapestry-work. When the proper hour came for paying their respects to their niece the queen, they tied on their large hooped petticoats, and other articles of court-dress, had their trains borne by their pages, and went ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... walls of the rooms must be calcimined, painted, frescoed and papered; they must be dyed in the mortar, finished with leather, with tiles, with tapestry and with solid wood panels. There must be blinds—outside blinds, awnings, inside shutters, rolling blinds, Venetian shades and no blinds at all. There must be wide, low-roofed piazzas all around the house, so that we can live out of doors in ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... Whitsuntide, is one large white tapestry of celandine. When I visited Tintern, I was struck by the lush clustering growth of this flower in 1885. An old legend says that it is so called because the swallow cures the eyes of its young of blindness by ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope

... receives through Chilion and his violin, till on the grave of "one who tried to love his fellow-men" grows up the full white rose-flower of her life. The ease with which she assimilates the city life when in it, making it a part of her imaginative tapestry, is a sign of the power to which ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... harsh outlines of the walls and pontoons changed subtly into a great wine-red castle, that lay on a colorful tapestry of seaweed, with a background of blue ocean ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... artificial flowers in gold entwine. It is usual to find in all houses of fashion, as in this, several dozens of chairs, all of which have stuffed backs and cushions, standing in double rows round the rooms. The dining-room was equally beautiful, being hung with Gobelin tapestry, the colors and figures of which resemble the most elegant painting. In this room were hair-bottom mahogany-backed chairs, and the first I have seen since I came to France. Two small statues of a Venus de Medicis, and a Venus de —— (ask Miss Paine ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... a week later, the great palace in the Via Larga had been prepared for the reception of another tenant; and if drapery roofing the streets with unwonted colour, if banners and hangings pouring out of the windows, if carpets and tapestry stretched over all steps and pavement on which exceptional feet might tread, were an unquestionable proof of joy, Florence was very joyful in the expectation of its new guest. The stream of colour flowed from the palace in the Via Larga round by the Cathedral, then by the ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... words — A golden troop of birds, Caged in a little volume made to love; Singing, singing, Flinging, flinging Their breaking hearts on mine, and swiftly bringing Tears, and the peace thereof. How the world woke anew! How the days broke anew! Before my tear-blind eyes a tapestry I seemed to see, Woven of all the dreams dead or to be. Hills, hills of song, Springs of eternal bloom, Autumns of golden pomp and purple gloom Were hung upon his loom. Winters of pain, roses with awful thorns, Yet wondrous faith in God's ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... and dark night, she walketh in the streets, and lieth wait at every corner, that she might catch and kiss him who is void of understanding." With a beguiling, impudent face she says to him: "I have peace offerings with me; I have decked my bed with tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... as of yore, the brush creepers made a tangled tapestry around it, and crimson and blue convolvulus swung their velvety, dew-beaded chalices above it, as on that June morning long ago when she stood there filling her bucket, waiting ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... voices murmured, "No, you couldn't do that." "But colonial—it would be charming," the authority went on. "Personally, I'd tear the whole thing down and rebuild," said Mrs. White further; "but with hardwood floors throughout, tapestry papers, or the new grass papers—like Amy's library, Will—white paint on all the woodwork, white and cream outside, some really good furniture, and the garden made over—you ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... was summoned to make the birthday offerings to his household gods. A heavy curtain of tapestry was drawn back; and beyond it Marius gazed for a few moments into the Lararium, or imperial chapel. A patrician youth, in white habit, was in waiting, with a little chest in his hand containing incense for the [229] use of the altar. On richly carved consoles, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... people; the sweet chants of the clergy; the harmonious sounds of warlike instruments; the solemn decorations of the churches, inside and out; the streets, the houses, the roads of all the castles and towns, hung with curtains and tapestry of silk and covered with flowers, shrubs and green branches; all the inhabitants of every sort, sex, and age running from every quarter to see so grand a triumph; peasants and harvesters breaking off their work, hanging ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... fever, and left the hall to go up to the closet where he sometimes slept. His servant carried him a cup of hot wine, and brought back word that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in the passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... neighboring inhabitants in the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... spring; and the grimy sky, the mud of the streets, the rags of the dirty men, harmonised excellently with the eruption of the damp, rubbishy sheets of paper soiled with printers' ink. The posters, maculated with filth, garnished like tapestry the sweep of the curbstone. The trade in afternoon papers was brisk, yet, in comparison with the swift, constant march of foot traffic, the effect was of indifference, of a disregarded distribution. Ossipon looked hurriedly both ways before stepping out into the cross-currents, but the Professor ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... the foot of the stairs was opened by Mrs. Aylward. It led to a sort of narrow lobby, with a sashed window above a low door, opening on stone steps down to the terrace and garden. To the right was an open door, giving admittance to a room hung with tapestry, with a small carpet in the centre of the floor, and a table prepared for the morning meal. There was a certain cheerfulness about it, though it was bare of furniture; but there was an easy chair, a settee, a long couch, a spinnet, and an embroidery frame, so that altogether ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... She was sure that she and the red-haired lady were the cause of one or the other, and that neither was the cause of both. These two facts served for a warp upon which she could weave endless mental embroideries, tales as real as the tales of old tapestry, tales of love and jealousy, and unexpected meetings, in which she and Owen and the red-haired lady met and re-met. Whilst Father Railston was preaching, these tales flowed on and on, subtle as silk, illusive ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... stable, where we left Rosinante at hob-a-nob with his mare over a friendly bottle of hay. And we ourselves passed into the house, and ascended a staircase into an upper chamber. This chamber was raftered, its walls hung with an obscure tapestry, its floor strewn with sand, and its lozenged casement partly shuttered against the blaze of sunshine that flowed across the forests far away to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... life of S. George. The principal figure is on horseback with a discus round his head. The other figures are in hauberks and chausses, and generally bear, in point of costume, much resemblance to the figures on the famous Bayeux tapestry. Barfreston church, Kent, has an interesting tympanum, as also has Patrixbourne church in the same county, where the sculpture shows the Saviour with dragons and at his feet a dog. At Alveston church, Warwickshire, ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... unwonted pause from effort the Professor found himself taking a general survey of the field he had travelled. At last it was possible to lift his nose from the loom, to step a moment in front of the tapestry he had been weaving. From this first inspection of the pattern so long wrought over from behind, it was natural to glance a little farther and seek its reflection in the public eye. It was not indeed of his special task that he thought in this connection. He was but one of the great army of ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... some beneficial government that will lift us out of the dirt, and enable me to match Mary Sancha according to my own good pleasure; then wilt thou hear thyself called Donna Teresa Panza, and find thyself seated at church upon carpets, cushions, and tapestry, in despite and defiance of all the small gentry in the parish; and not be always in the same moping circumstances, without increase or diminution, like a picture in the hangings. But no more of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... by many as being of the first importance; Nicarchus, the son of the rich Hippocleides, and Zenodotus a weaver of tapestry—whose quadriga had once proved victorious—hastily made their way into the town to give the requisite orders in their stables, and they were closely followed by Hippias, the handsome agitator, who was the favorite driver ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... stranger and to every peasant, flew open before the high-born group, and the almoner, as he recognized the duke, bent his knee in reverence. They mounted a heavy flight of stairs, and, traversing an arched gallery, were ushered into the principal hall. This large room was hung with solemn tapestry, reaching from the ceiling to the floor. The characteristic piety of these ages displayed itself in the beautiful recesses in the walls, adapted to the reception of holy water, and in the devices upon ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... the hillsides, and, coppices; and beyond, the mountain, the evergreens massed like cloud-shadows on its slopes; and all-trees and coppice and mountain—flattened by the haze until they seemed woven in the softest of blues and blue greens into one exquisite picture of an ancient tapestry. I, myself, have seen these pictures in that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... divided into 72 compartments. Every line is expressed by coarse stitches of coloured thread or worsted, of which this arrow's head is a facsimile, and the figures are worked in various colours, the groundwork and the flesh tints being generally left white. The extraordinary preservation of the tapestry, when we consider, not only the date of the work, but the vicissitudes to which it has been subjected, is so remarkable, that the spectator is disposed to ask to see the 'original,' feeling sure that this fresh, bright-looking piece of work cannot have lasted thus ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... fallen from a pediment. Nor is any attempt made to relate, by the aid of vague look or gesture, this group in the foreground to the human hordes engaged in building enclosures in the middle distance. In Chavannes the composition is always as disparate as an early tapestry, and the drawing of the figures is almost as rude. If I may be permitted a French phrase, I will say un peu sommaire quite unlike the beautiful simplifications of Raphael or Ingres, or indeed any of the great ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... of France, places such as those of the Prince of Monaco, of Mr. Balny d'Avricourt, that of Coucy, have been looted and pillaged. Antique furniture, paintings by the great masters, sculptures, historic pieces of tapestry have been carried off into Germany. Tapestries, sculptures, furniture and paintings must come back from Germany. The museums at St. Quentin and Lille have seen their collections of value to art and science carried off; these collections must come back. Factories have been ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne



Words linked to "Tapestry" :   tapis, textile, edging, material, arras, fabric, complexity, tapestry moth, complexness



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