"Decorative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have a card tray—brass if the hardware is brass— silver if the hardware is nickel or iron—and a medium-sized pottery vase in crackle ware, or some natural color. A hall lantern or scones would be in harmony with these furnishings, and have decorative value. ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... dress is one of paint; the feature of it being its design, a man can gain quite a tribal reputation for being an originator of decorative designs. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... remarked, 'that there are a good many employments which would give the sisters very pleasant occupation, such as decorative art or clerical work.' ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... to penny to save the Guion competence. Standing in the cheerful "Colonial" hall which their stinting of themselves had made it possible to build, and which was still furnished chiefly with the objects—a settle, a pair of cupboards, a Copley portrait, a few chairs, some old decorative pottery—they had lived with, it afforded one more steadying element for her bewilderment to grasp at, to ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the sun drew another blaze from the free-bosomed earth. Whereupon a neighbour's little girl, at the behest of her mother, duly craved and received permission from Bess to gather a few poppies for decorative purposes. But of this I was uninformed, and when I descried her in the midst of the field I waved my arms like a semaphore ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of evening, he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic sense. It was a big building, severely simple in design, yet with the rich grace, spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian palace: compact, generous, traditionally genuine ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... market, but for the daily use of the people, such as drinking-vessels—lota is the pretty name—and big brass plates out of which they eat their rice and dhalbat. They keep them beautifully polished with sand, and I think they ought to be rather decorative; much more attractive certainly than the candlesticks and pots and cheap rough silver-work which is the usual loot carried away by the ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... * * * * * represents a decorative line in the original. A few lines were added by the transcriber at a page break when there was ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... nakedness of it. There is no decorative treatment here, no evidence of an attempt to impress upon the report the individuality of the paper. The Editor rightly divined that the simple, splendid tragedy of the event offered no opportunity for a display of his art. His art, indeed, could have ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... Coomstock family Bible, on its green worsted mat, and a glass shade containing the stuffed carcass of a fox-terrier. The animal was moth-eaten and its eyes had fallen out. It could be considered in no sense decorative; but sentiment allowed the corpse this central position in a sorry scheme of adornment, for the late timber merchant had loved it. Upon Mrs. Coomstock's parlour walls hung Biblical German prints in frames of sickly yellow wood; along the window-ledge geraniums ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... tone engravings by Charles D. Williams. With initial letters, tail-pieces, decorative borders. Beautifully printed, and daintily ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... I will give you a fuller account some day. The book is a very pretty one in more than one sense. The decorative harp, perhaps, too ostentatious; a simple ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... inventor and discoverer gets his guidance, there the poet gets his inspiration, there the religious mind gets its beliefs. In short, the constitution of the mental state allows on the whole to the upper consciousness a rather decorative part while the real work is left ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... From the decorative point of view she was as unlovely as Narcisse or myself. She was dull, unimaginative, ignorant, as far removed from Paragot as Narcisse from a greyhound. Why then, in the name of men and angels, should Paragot have taken ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... models and the forms of immortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the Temple of Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals, have had a steady molding, educating influence equal to a society of decorative art upon the people and the animals who have dwelt in this artistic atmosphere. The Attic goat has become an artificially artistic being; though of course he is not now what he was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus. There is opportunity for a very ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... passing throng of pedestrians on any crowded street see the use and abuse of this noble material. There is scarcely an article of dress into whose composition it does not enter and it is worn upon all occasions. Many things have brought about this result. The tendency of fashion is towards the decorative and picturesque and in these qualities velvet excels all other fabrics. Silk waste and thread are cheaper than ever before so that velvet costs much less than formerly. The men behind the looms have evolved more designs and novelties in the making of velvet ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... not disparage delicate and fragile flowerets, though I am so infatuated by their brilliant sisters. They are lovely to examine, and, as individuals, very precious, but in my opinion useless for decorative purposes. In a body they confuse one another, and you ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... chivalrous and soldierly bearing. He had long limbs, broad shoulders and a not yet expanded waist. His nose and chin were clearly and strongly cut, his eyes brightly blue; his moustache ran to decisive little points twisted up from the lip and was as decorative as an epaulette upon a martial shoulder. Pleasantness radiated from him, and though, with years, this pleasantness was significant rather of his general attitude than of his individual interest, though his movements had become a little indolent and his features ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... loitered in the white flare of drugstore lights. Here and there a brown stoop bloomed with a boarder or two. In front of Seligman's florist shop, which occupied the ground floor of Madam Moores's dressmaking establishment, Alphonse Michelson paused for a moment in the flare of its decorative show-window and flecked at his hatband with sheer ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... rice on the bride's head and she lays the juari at his feet. A dish full of water with a golden ring in it is put between them, and they lay their hands on the ring together under the water and walk five times round a decorative little marriage-shed erected inside the real one. A feast is given, and the bridal couple sit on a little dais and eat out of the same dish. The remarriage of widows is permitted, but the widow may not marry a man belonging to the section either of her first husband ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... combined some of the best elements of Turkish character and their administration was better than that of any other Oriental country of their date. Of Shahjahan's government and its patronage of the arts both decorative and useful we have trustworthy contemporary descriptions. His especial taste was for architecture; and the Mosque and Palace of Dehli, which he personally designed, even after the havoc of two centuries, still remain the climax of the Indo-Saracenic ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... an opinion of my qualifications by examining some sketches which are in my trunk. I have furnished several designs for the 'Society of Decorative Art', and have sold a number of painted articles at ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the ornamentation your friend objects to?[4] If it is, I would observe that there is no evidence of progress in the decorative and ornamental arts during the Ming Dynasty; and even in the Jesuit instruments that part of the work is purely Chinese, excepting in one instrument, which I am persuaded must have been made ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... The decorative needle-work exhibit constituted a very selected and complete collection; there being offered to view pieces of embroidery to the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... I had to face the usual ordeal of having to "write" as best I could a motto for use as a wall picture. Our lettering, when done with a brush, falls pitifully behind Chinese characters in decorative value, and our mottoes will not readily translate into Japanese. I was often grateful to Henley for "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul," because with the substitution of "commander" for captain, the lines ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... undoubtedly have been epoch-making. A bust of an old woman had some of the traits of Donatello. Everything in the room testified to the facility with which the youthful master created. There was a long decorative frieze in clay, putti with goats, dancing fauns, maenads, Silenus on his donkey, a procession of bacchantic figures celebrating the vintage and reproducing all the bacchic joyousness, the drunkenness, of men and women vintagers, as they cut and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and its expression is for her not less sacredly part of the universal process than the wheeling of suns and planets: a Greek vase is to her as intimately concerned with Nature as the growing corn—with that Nature who formed the swan and the peacock for decorative delight, and who puts ivory and ebony cunningly together on the blackthorn ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... our windows looked out upon, stood perfectly straight and upright across the sky to the south of them a row of magnolias (grandiflora) at least sixty feet high, with their boles, as smooth as the beach, trimmed bare for two-thirds of their stature. The really decorative marks of the trimming had been so many years, so many decades, healed as to show that no harm had come of it or would come. The soaring, dark-green, glittering foliage stood out against the almost perpetually blue and ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... break a thousand fortunes in a day. He answered Evesham carelessly, with his gaze still on Mary, and in a voice too low for my straining ears. There was some woman in the group also, but she has left nothing upon my mind whatever except an effect of black and a very decorative green sunshade. She greeted Justin's remark, I remember, with the little yelp of laughter that characterized that set. I think too there was someone else in the group; but I cannot ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life." Selden raised himself on his elbow. "Good heavens!" he went on, "I don't underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we're all the raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... faces (hardly larger, some of them, than a pin's head) looked at one with the same expression as the original, and not a mistake had been made in a fold of drapery. Each sculptured capital, each column, each decorative altar of the interior had been carved with loving fidelity. All that, in the vast Cathedral had taken centuries and many generations of men to plan and finish, this one infinitely patient man had ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... be truly said that Romanesque Cathedrals are lacking in splendour; and it will be found in a large majority of cases that they are also without the impressiveness of great size; that they are almost devoid of shapely windows or stained glass, of notable carvings or richness of decorative detail. Their art is a simple art, a sober art, and in its nearest approach to opulence—the sculptured portals of Saint-Trophime of Arles or Saint-Gilles-de-Languedoc—there is still a reserved rather than an exuberant and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... of paint, styled "enamel," are now made, suitable for both useful and decorative purposes—garden stands, indoor furniture or ornaments, baths, &c. They are ready mixed in a variety of shades, can be easily applied, and dry with a hard ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... ETC, FOR "FITTING up."—Time was when our ancestors were content to stick their preserved specimens in boxes with nothing to break the blank of white paper which backed them up. Nowadays we have arrived at such a pitch of decorative art in taxidermy, as in all things, that this stiffness of outline does not suffice; accordingly, we break our background by flowing lines of beauty, produced by the graceful aids of dried ferns and grasses, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... painted red; a loft with big, plain tables and a bare floor and an only slightly partitioned-off kitchenette where the hungry could descry piles of sandwiches and many coffee cups. And there in the middle of the loft was the Samovar itself, a really splendid affair, and one actually not for decorative purposes only, but for use. I had always thought samovars were for the ornamentation either of houses or foreign-atmosphere novels. But you could use this thing. I saw people go and get glasses-full of tea out ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... handsome recessed window over the altar-piece at the east end. The principal timbers of the roof are formed into Gothic perforated compartments, which give an addition of height to the Chapel, and an airy, decorative ceiling, at a small expense. The Chapel is calculated to contain eight hundred sittings, of which four hundred are free and unappropriated; and great benefit is anticipated from its erection in this populous neighbourhood, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... old, bastard, half-commercial, fine-art were presently condemned, great oil paintings, done to please the half-educated middle-class, glared for a moment and were gone, Academy marbles crumbled to useful lime, a gross multitude of silly statuettes and decorative crockery, and hangings, and embroideries, and bad music, and musical instruments shared this fate. And books, countless books, too, and bales of newspapers went also to these pyres. From the private houses in Swathinglea alone—which I had deemed, perhaps ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... stamping, which may emphasize the depth of color in the leather. The next step in the direction of ornament is gilding, the next inlaying. In the older books we find metal clasps and corners, which have great decorative possibilities; but these, like precious stones, have disappeared from book ornamentation in modern times before the combined inroad of the democratic ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... the back shelves is readily obtained. Thus, by walking about his room, Mr. Markham can look with level eyes for the book he wants, and procure it without recourse to a chair or stepladder. This plan of banking books also lends itself to a decorative arrangement ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... just about to say that it is the cleverest thing in the Exhibition—from an artistic point of view. No special interest in it, but the scheme of colour very harmonious—and very decorative. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... 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 after the pattern is made to give decorative effects than it would to make everything plain." The plans have provided for a type of house that would cost not far from $30,000 if built of cut stone. He gave to Messrs. Mann & McNaillie, architects, New York, his idea of the type of house he wanted. On receiving these plans he changed them ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and was employed also on shafts, as in the cloisters of Monreale near Palermo, those of St Paul outside Rome, and many churches in Germany. Its earliest appearance was in the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae, where the shafts flanking the entrance doorway have nine decorative chevron bands; in this case there is no doubt it was derived from the metal casing of the early ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... cairns and silicon-bronze inscribed tablets they'd left on oxygen-type worlds over a twelve-hundred-light-year range in space, and the only thing to be deduced about the Plumies themselves came from the decorative, formalized symbols like feathery plumes which were found on all their bronze tablets. The name ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... just now a curious breath from Europe. A young fellow just beginning letters, and no fool, turned up here with a letter of introduction in the well-known blue ink and decorative hieroglyphs of George Meredith. His name may be known to you. It is Sidney Lysaght. He is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange to me and not unpleasant to hear all the names, old and new, come up again. But oddly the new are so much more in number. If I revisited ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... every moment of her life, every advantage—it made her beautifully soft, very nearly generous; so she didn't distinguish the little protuberant eyes of smaller social insects, often endowed with such a range, from the other decorative spots on their bodies and wings. Maggie had liked, in London, and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Mr. Nelson had something not unlike the carriage and tone of a gentleman; he talked quietly, though light-heartedly, and from remarks he let fall it appeared that he was somehow connected with the decorative arts. Minnie and he dropped into a discussion of some new ceramic design put forth by Doulton's; they seemed to understand each other, and grew more animated as they exchanged opinions. The hostess, meanwhile, kept glancing at them with ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... She did not expect Von Rosen to be much edified by Miss Bessy Dicky's report. She had her own opinion of Miss Bessy Dicky, of her sleeves, of her gown, and her report, but she had faith in the truly decorative features of the occasion when they should be underway, and she had immense faith in Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder. She was relieved when Miss Bessy Dicky sat down, and endeavoured to compose her knees, which by this time were trembling ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... addressed to me?" inquired Wilfred, with an unsmiling and brazen gravity that brought to the girl's eyes and lips a half-mocking and wholly decorative twinkle of amusement. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... and branches with pitch or bitumen. "Bored stone axes are found in the tropical regions of America. Although they are very rare, they are well executed."[201] The device of boring stone axes appears at the end of the stone age in the lake dwellings of Switzerland. Perhaps they were only decorative.[202] The Polynesians used stone axes which were polished but not bored or grooved, and the edge was not curved.[203] The Pacific islanders clung to the type of the adze, so that even when they got iron and steel implements from the whites they preferred ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... subsisting date from the time of Edward III., when Pau was the capital of the celebrated Gaston-Phoebus. The chateau was considerably enlarged and embellished in the fifteenth century, but it was not until after Margaret's marriage with Henry d'Albret that the more remarkable decorative work was executed. Upon leaving Nerac to reside at Pau, Margaret summoned a number of Italian artists and confided the embellishment of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... men and things. And the George Sand preserves the private philosophy which a passionate woman slowly distilled as she made her stormy pilgrimage through life. Each of these volumes, which contain illustrations in line and colour, is a slender casket of jewels. In decorative wrapper, 6d. net. Bound in Velvet Persian Yapp, 1/- net; also in Japon ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... on the outside—except for the perceived elaboration of the window draperies within—was, Lee saw at once, a rich undisturbed accumulation of the decorative traditions of the eighteen-eighties. The hall was dark, with a ceiling and elaborate panels of black walnut and a high dull silver paper. The reception room into which he was shown, by a maid, was jungle-like ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... trees of diverse essences into life, and flowers with conflicting fragrances and colors. By the clash of these tones he created a general, nondescript, unexpected, strange perfume in which reappeared, like an obstinate refrain, the decorative phrase of the beginning, the odor of the meadows fanned by the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... mind that it is the rich shareholder who spends the money. While occupation and skill incline one towards severity and economy, leisure and unlimited means involve relaxation and demand the adventitious interest of decoration. The shareholder will be the decorative influence in the State. So far as there will be a typical shareholder's house, we may hazard that it will have rich colours, elaborate hangings, stained glass adornments, and added interests in great abundance. This "leisure class" will certainly employ the greater proportion of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Decorative brick-work, as we find it used in English architecture, is not simply the outgrowth of the Dutch school, introduced at the accession of William of Orange. For centuries it had been employed with success, particularly in Norfolk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... ignorant. The negroes and mulattoes have strong motives to exertion of every kind, and succeed in what they undertake accordingly. They are the best artificers and artists. The orchestra of the opera-house is composed of at least one-third of mulattoes. All decorative painting, carving, and inlaying is done by them; in short, they excel in ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... I think he has all he can do keeping up with the beauty shop. You see, it is more than a massage parlour. They do real decorative surgery, as it is called. They'll engage to give you a new skin as soft and pink as a baby's. Or they will straighten a nose, or turn an ear. They have light treatment for complexions—the ruby ray, the violet ray, the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... time, after twelve years and more of marriage, they were very good friends; or, why not say, old acquaintances? There are two kinds of crystallisation in love affairs, with all respect to M. de Stendhal. One kind hardens the surfaces without any decorative effect. There are no facets visible, no angles to catch the light. In the case of the Macartney marriage I suspect this to have been the only kind—a kind of callosity, protective and numbing. The less they were ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the huge columns were decorative or symbolical figures wearing the pschent, armed with the tau, following each other in procession, and whose eyes, showing full upon a side face, seemed to look inquisitively into the hall. Lines of perpendicular hieroglyphs separated the zones of personages. Among the green ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... few weeks Hester did Rose a still better turn. She (Hester) came to her friend with an order for decorative designs in scroll-work, which had reached the elder girl from a decorator ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... by Honore de Balzac, Criticisms on the Author by Sainte-Beuve, Portraits by Coypel and Mignard, and decorative Titlepages. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... shifted slightly so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. The illustration tags for the decorative chapter headers and footers have not been retained ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... either side of the throne wore, like its occupant, robes of red, lined with ermine. The rank behind wore shorter robes, less decorative, but no less extraordinary. They might all have stepped out of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... old brooch of goldstone, bordered with flowers in blue and white and red and green—tiny blossoms of little stones which looked like the flowers which grow at the snow line on Pike's Peak. Jennie felt that it must be a cheap affair, but it was decorative, and she wondered where Mrs. Irwin got it. She guessed it must have a story—a story in which the stooped, rusty, somber old lady looked like a character drawn to harmonize with the period just after the war. For the black ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... of the growth of religious symbolism, and also its gradual decay into decorative art and mnemonic design. The tendency of related symbolism is toward the identification of the symbol with that for which it stands, toward personification or prosopopeia; while what I may call the secularization ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... down from the fourth floor of the Whitman building, the light had indeed gone out of the undertaking. Mr. Sprig's subject, the digestive and excretory tracts, had not been a propitious one for so critical a time. Leofwin, who had invited himself along, had been captivated by the decorative possibilities of the alimentary canal and had led the discussion following the lecture with a vigour and thoroughness trying for those unfamiliar with an artist's training. "Don't you think it might be fun to trace something all the way from the initial bite down?" ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... and capitalization Decorative features of final letters, especially -ll printed with connecting line Font changes such as boldface instead of small capitals Prices are printed inline as ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... still life. Falstaff with his huge body, Bardolph with his burning nose, are masterpieces of the pen; but they would be fine sketches even for the pencil. King Lear, in the storm, is a landscape as well as a character study. There is something decorative even about the insistence on the swarthiness of Othello, or the deformity of Richard III. Shakespeare's work is much more than picturesque; but it is picturesque. And the same which is said here of him by way of example is largely true of the highest class ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... place about his sovereign at the coronation. Or perhaps it was some post in the Beefeaters'. She made him out like a cross between Lohengrin and the Chevalier Bayard. Perhaps he was.... But he was too silent a fellow to make that side of him really decorative. I remember going to him at about that time and asking him what the D.S.O. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... of too strange a shape to be a biretta. It suggested, rather, some archaic headdress of Persia or Babylon. He had a curious black beard appearing only at the corners of his chin, and his large eyes were oddly set in his face like the flat decorative eyes painted in old Egyptian profiles. Before they had gathered more than a general impression of him, he had dived into the doorway that was their ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... buildings, very striking, very original, very chic, very everything but habitable. It was in this way that he had tried his hand on sculpture, which he had at first approached rather slightingly as a mere decorative accessory of architecture. But it had grown in his respect till he maintained that the accessory business ought to be all the other way: that temples should be raised to enshrine statues, not statues made to ornament temples; that was putting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their refined and finished detail, filled with plenishings which fitted naturally into his scheme. His own taste developed as he went on, but he was usually extremely successful, and cabinetmakers are still reproducing his most effective designs. In his furniture he made lavish use of his favourite decorative motives—-wreaths and paterae, the honeysuckle, and that fan ornament which he used so constantly. Thus an Adam house is a unique product of English art. From facade to fire-irons, from the chimneys to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... may be seen. The north transept retains its Norman arcading, which, fortunately, has not been touched by the restorer's hand; how long it may escape is doubtful, as it is much mutilated. Still, as it is simply decorative, and not necessary for the stability of the wall, it would be well to leave it untouched, as genuine old work, even though it may have suffered at the hand of time or of former generations, is, from a decorative point of view, infinitely preferable to any modern reproduction. There are two small ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... North American Indian. The Oraon is particular about his personal appearance only so long as he is unmarried, but he is in no hurry to withdraw from the Dhumkuria community, and generally his first youth is passed before he resigns his decorative propensities. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... almost the first words of Monsieur D'Aurevilly, 'c'est un sentiment contre lequel tout le monde est impitoyable.' Few remember that the dandy's vanity is far different from the crude conceit of the merely handsome man. Dandyism is, after all, one of the decorative arts. A fine ground to work upon is its first postulate. And the dandy cares for his physical endowments only in so far as they are susceptible of fine results. They are just so much to him as to the decorative ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... exquisitely-wrought fringe and tassels are nearly perfect. And if you will kneel down and look long at the tassels of the cushion under the head, and the way they fill the angles of the stone, you will,—or may—know, from this example alone, what noble decorative sculpture is, and was, and must be, from the days of earliest Greece to ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... the photographs here reproduced, the aim has been not so much to show exhibits as to illustrate the plan, architecture and decorative art of the Exposition, and to indicate the advance which it scores over its predecessors. The pictures, with their full "underlines," will aid those who have not yet visited the Exposition to apprehend its spirit ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... of her femininity she entered into the purchasing of the yellow opera cloak. They paid for that decorative garment the sum of two thousand five hundred francs. It seemed it was embroidered, and the lining was—anyway, they ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... in the skin of a fish, as an Egyptian god was simply a bull before he was depicted in human shape wearing a bull's skin. The archaic Sumerian animal and composite monster gods of animistic and totemic origin survived after the anthropomorphic period as mythical figures, which were used for decorative or magical purposes and as symbols. A form of divine headdress was a cap enclosed in horns, between which appeared the soaring lion-headed eagle, which symbolized Nin-Girsu. This god had also lion and antelope ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues—of angel faces, fluttering raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details to the main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chaunt of Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of the great decorative wall painting of Puvis de Chavannes in the Boston Public Library again directs public attention to this remarkable building. To us this last addition to the architectural work (for every feature of the building, whether constructional, utilitarian, or purely ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... which he had lately been living. There was no sort of resemblance between the two kinds of splendor, no single point in common. The loftiness and disposition of the rooms in one of the handsomest houses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the ancient gilding, the breadth of decorative style, the subdued richness of the accessories, all this was strange and new to him; but Lucien had learned very quickly to take luxury for granted, and he showed no surprise. His behavior was as far removed from assurance or fatuity on the one hand as from complacency ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... up of children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes the education of a gentleman; and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities—the management of a family. Is it that the discharge of it is but a remote contingency? On the ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... In most cases the existing conditions would not be altered even if one knocked at the door and insisted on entering with drawn sword in the form of attendant policeman The outside of the slice of a house in which Feather lived was still rather fresh from its last decorative touching up. It had been painted cream colour and had white and windows and green window boxes with variegated vinca vines trailing from them and pink geraniums, dark blue lobelia and ferns filling the earth ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... limits I believe this improvement may indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour momentary fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may produce both good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and substance of pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design. Such design is usually produced by people of great natural powers of mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on, no oppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of natural scenery ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... United States senator submitting to photography for publication in a press that has no respect for private rights. He lacked but a few clothes and the portico of a capitol. Speech became immanent in him. One should not have been surprised to hear him utter decorative words meant for the rejoicing and incitement of voters. Yet he ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the Church, exists in manuscript at Dux, and it is from this manuscript that the two published volumes of it were printed. The library forms part of the Museum, which occupies a ground-floor wing of the castle. The first room is an armoury, in which all kinds of arms are arranged, in a decorative way, covering the ceiling and the walls with strange patterns. The second room contains pottery, collected by Casanova's Waldstein on his Eastern travels. The third room is full of curious mechanical toys, and cabinets, and carvings in ivory. Finally, we come to the library, contained in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Alike in the Greek schools as in our own, this is the case. Men dress their children's minds as they do their bodies in the prevailing fashion; and in the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has continued to predominate in an even greater degree among women than among men. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic trivialities are committed to memory, not because of any direct benefit that can possibly result from ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... may, one of these days. But first she must learn to behave herself. A nice girl, Millicent. She would look decorative, sitting beside an invalid in a carriage. Yes, I'll think of it. Meanwhile, I shall chaff her about the five thousand and see how ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... lightly waved hands with keen approval, then rose to the lively and colourful face, with its hazel eyes, its small and pretty nose, and the lip-caught smile which seemed the climax of her decorative transition. Never had he seen a creature so ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... in the Italian Venus the breasts are so small as to be scarcely traceable; the body strong, and almost masculine in its angles; the arms meagre and unattractive, and she lays a decorative garland of flowers on the earth. These signs mean that the Italian thought of love as the strength of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful; and for ever crowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor harvest, and bloom where there is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... decorative cover, frontispiece, title page in color, and ornamental head and tail pieces. Cloth. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... belts of woodland or marsh which everywhere surrounded their isolated villages. They were acquainted with the use of bronze from the first period of their settlement in Europe, and some of the battle-axes or shields which they manufactured from this metal were beautifully chased with exquisite decorative patterns, equalling in taste the ornamental designs still employed by the Polynesian islanders. Such weapons, however, were doubtless intended for the use of the chieftains only, and were probably employed as insignia of rank alone. They are still discovered ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... The lightning became more and more vivid; and, at length, the thousands who had lingered in these groups of gaiety, were fairly routed by pelting rain; and the park, with a few lamps flickering out, and decorative finery drenched with rain, presented a miserable contrast with the festivities of the previous hour. The crowd streamed through the park-gate into the village, where hundreds of competitors shouted "Paris, Paris;" and their swarms of diligences, cabriolets, and curtained carts, were soon freighted. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... desk and drummed his fingers on the top of it. Then he burst out of the office and began pacing the big chamber. Finally, even that was too confining. He left the building and started stalking through the campus. He walked past a dozen buildings, turned and strode as far as the decorative fence that marked the end of the main campus, ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... purely mechanical principles, and human figures were represented altogether in accordance with established conventions. Greek sculpture, on the contrary, even in its primitive forms was eminently natural, capable of developing a high degree of realism. From the first it was decorative in character, and this left the artist free to execute in his own way, provided only that the result should be in accordance with the highest type of beauty which he could conceive. An example of this ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... industries of the cities and countries through which they pass. A description is given of the native sports of boys in each of the foreign countries through which they travel. The books are illustrated by decorative head and end pieces for each chapter, there being 36 original drawings in each book, all by the author, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... almost tempted to regard them as nuisances. A few of these ornamental trifles, arranged with an eye to a certain unity of design, may do very well; but, as William Morris, the great apostle of true decorative art in England, has said, "Better pure empty space than unworthy and confusing ornament." You may have heard it related of the great naturalist, Thoreau, that he made a collection of stones during his rambles, and placed them on his writing-table; but when he found he had ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... found a second descending ramp, this one less steep than the first, so that he was able to keep to his feet while using it. And the gloom of the next floor was broken by odd scraps of light which showed through pierced portions of the decorative bands. The door was there, a locking bar ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... spirit of newer times. Being in the beginning of his career, as is generally believed, only an illuminator, he continued, with subtle delicacy and accurate, almost timid design, to illuminate in larger proportions on his panels, those figures which are often only parts of a decorative whole. But in his later works while still preserving the simplicity of handling, and the innate character of his style, he displays a new tendency, and learns to give life to his figures, not only by the expression of purity and sweet ecstasy, but in finer particularization ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino |
