"Fretwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning as brides are seldom arrayed, but with a sense of artistic obedience to her own sumptuous nature and personality. The royal purple of her velvets was cut, on skirt and bodice, into one continuous fretwork of heavy scrolls and leafage, and through the crevices of this textile carving shone the robe she carried beneath: it was tawny yellow, for she wore under her outward dress a complete robe of ancient lace, whose cobweb softness was more than half sacrificed—only perceived ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... and with a sweep of his hand indicated the stripped room. It was a noble chamber. The stamp of the elegant simplicity of Cyrus, the Persian, was upon it. The ancient blue and white mosaics that had been laid by the Parsee builder and the fretwork and twisted pillars were there, but the silky carpets, the censers and the chairs of fine woods were gone. Costobarus looked steadily at ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... of artists too often are) mere picturesque approximations, were true in every curve and line. He told me he had spent a fortnight in tracing out the involved mathematical figures, curves, circles, and right lines—on which the intricate fretwork of one of the obelisks was formed, and in making separate drawings of each compartment, before commencing his draught of the entire stone. And, looking with the eye of the stone-cutter at his preliminary sketches, from ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... at the ebb stretching like fortifications about it, as if to make of it a sure stronghold in the sea. The strange architecture and carving of the rocks, with faces and crowned heads but half obliterated upon them; the lofty arches, with columns of fretwork bearing them; the pinnacles, and sharp spires; the fallen masses heaped against the base of the cliffs, covered with seaweed, and worn out of all form, yet looking like the fragments of some great temple, with its treasures of sculpture; and about them all the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... radiant. It had been very bad weather, and he and Sydney seemed to have been doing a great quantity of fretwork together, and to have had much music, only chaperoned by old Sir James, for Fordham had been paying for his exertions at the wedding by being confined ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speak! He tells me nothing! A marble palace this, but never a home!" The timid girl had seen no beloved woman's face upon the fretwork of the walls of this Aladdin's castle. And, in her own frightened heart, she remembered the ashen pallor of her father's face when she had faltered out the burning question of her yearning heart—the question of long years! The past was still a blank to her, while on this same night, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... building, 361 feet in circumference, surmounted by a dome 180 feet high, and constructed after the designs of Diotisalvi. It was commenced in 1153 and finished towards the end of the 14th cent. Above the third storey rises the dome, intersected by long lines of very prominent fretwork, meeting in a cornice near the top, and terminating in a small dome crowned with a statue of St. John the Baptist, the titular saint of all such edifices. In the interior eight large Sardinian granite columns ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... journey in a desert. He has invested the whole place with an atmosphere of tragedy. It's Roman in feeling and Greek in the refinement of its ornamentation. That rotunda reminds one of the Pantheon in Rome. Those Corinthian columns, with the melancholy drooping of the acanthus and the fretwork and the frieze, by Zimm, are suggestive of Greece. Maybeck says that his mind was started on the conception, 'The Island of Death,' by Boecklin, the painting that the German people know so well as the 'Todteninsel,' and by 'The Chariot ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... the stunted pines and giant blocks along the stream's immediate margin,—getting glimpses here and there of the snowy fretwork of churned water which laced the higher rocks, and the black whirls which spun in the deep pits of the roaring bed beneath us,—we came at last to the base of "Yo-wi-ye," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... hence, under two gloomy arches, you come to the hall and staircase, which it is impossible to describe to you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty of the castle. Imagine the walls covered with (I call it paper, but it is really paper painted in perspective to represent) Gothic fretwork: the lightest Gothic balustrade to the staircase, adorned with antelopes (our supporters) bearing shields lean windows fattened with rich saints in painted glass, and a vestibule open with three arches on the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... received a fatal mischief in their desire for a sceptre, they will go to Styx in a common death. Fast by my head stands my Swedish shield, which is adorned with (as) a fresh mirror of diverse chasing, and ringed with layers of marvellous fretwork. There a picture of really hues shows slain nobles and conquered champions, and the wars also and the notable deed of my right hand. In the midst is to be seen, painted in bright relief, the figure of my son, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... opposition. Round about it every atom of the connecting masonry had mouldered away and sunk into heaps of rubbish below—so that all possibility of reaching the tower seemed to be cut off. But beyond this tower Gothic fretwork and imperfect windows rose from the surrounding crags; and in many places were seen pillars springing from two dissevered points of rock—rising higher and higher—and at last inclining towards each other ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... THOMAS GIDLING, is something indefinite and authoritative in the Post Office. He is a practical man. He can do fretwork, cook a steak, clean boots, find out what's wrong with the gas, and understand Waterloo Station; in an emergency he is invaluable. This is just as well, because destiny has decided that the life of THOMAS GIDLING shall be a series of emergencies. He has comfortable bachelor quarters at the very ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... from the pavement the canopies of the capitals have somewhat the appearance of outspread parasols, which lends a slightly grotesque air. The vaulting itself also being panelled, to resemble elaborate stone fretwork, rather detracts from the general beauty of the building, being but a meretricious kind of ornamentation, and quite unworthy the building. There are three stained ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... Marquis of Hastings, when Governor-General of India, broke up one of the most beautiful marble baths of this palace to send home to George IV of England, then Prince Regent, and the rest of the marble of the suite of apartments from which it had been taken, with all its exquisite fretwork and mosaic, was afterwards sold by auction, on account of our Government, by order of the then Governor-General, Lord W. Bentinck. Had these things fetched the price expected, it is probable that the whole of the palace, and even the Taj itself, would have been ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a small round shield fashioned of the same tough material. The sword instantly attracted our attention; it was practically identical with the one in the possession of Mr Mackenzie which he had obtained from the ill-starred wanderer. There was no mistaking the gold-lined fretwork cut in the thickness of the blade. So the man had told the truth after all. Our guide instantly gave a password, which the soldier acknowledged by letting the iron shaft of his spear fall with a ringing sound upon ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... morning, so mild was the air, so gay the sunshine, when the mist had risen. Wild flowers were blooming, and here and there unfolding leaves made a delicate fretwork against a deep blue sky. The wind did not blow; everywhere were stillness soft and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... is to be thought one; and no fear or apprehension lessens it. Alighieri, who had certainly studied the gospel, must have been conscious that he not only was inhumane, but that he betrayed a more vindictive spirit than any pope or prelate who is enshrined within the fretwork of his golden grating. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... ocean of the mountain ice, We skim its rugged breakers, which put on The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam, Frozen in a moment[140]—a dead Whirlpool's image: And this most steep fantastic pinnacle, The fretwork of some earthquake—where the clouds 10 Pause to repose themselves in passing by— Is sacred to our revels, or our vigils; Here do I wait my sisters, on our way To the Hall of Arimanes—for to-night Is our great ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to the river; for although the Murray had lost the fossil cliffs it was still flanked by high level plains on both sides, and cliffs of 100 or 120 feet in height, composed of clay and sand, rose above the stream, the faces of which presented the appearance of fretwork, so deeply and delicately had they been grooved out by rains. The soil of this upper table land was a bright red ferruginous clay and sand. The vegetation was chiefly salsolaceous, but there was, notwithstanding, no want of grass upon it, though the tufts were very far apart. If our cattle had ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... was everywhere six storeys high, reckoning the cellars underground for one. The second was arched after the fashion of a basket-handle; the rest were ceiled with pure wainscot, flourished with Flanders fretwork, in the form of the foot of a lamp, and covered above with fine slates, with an endorsement of lead, carrying the antique figures of little puppets and animals of all sorts, notably well suited to one another, and gilt, together with the gutters, which, jutting without the walls ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... storm-sound of Tibet, and the doves are perched among the glitter and tinkling bells of the pagoda roofs. I am squatting very quietly, for I am tired, after photographing carved peacocks and junglefowl in the marvelous fretwork of the outer balconies, There are idols all about me—or so it would appear to a missionary; for my part, I can think only of the wonderful face of the old Lama who sits near me, a face peaceful with the something for which most of us would desert ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... through the fretwork above also judged it expedient to beat a hasty retreat. They were terrified lest the verger should remember that he had left the tower door open, and should lock them in. They stumbled back among the rafters, regardless of dust, and groped their rather perilous ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... understand the words, but the signs were enough. The young white woman looked ill; and Umballa would deal harshly with those who failed to stem the tide of any illness which might befall his captive. There was a commotion behind the fretwork of the palace. Three other girls came out, and Winnie was conducted back to ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... could only hear of one pool in the United States where Salmo salar can be caught. There are heaps of salmon on the Pacific slope, but they are not salar, and not sportive in the rivers to the fly. This pool is the watery fretwork of a dam where the tidal portion of a fifty-mile length of river is ended, and the salmon are therefore caught in brackish water always with the fly. Seventy were taken ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... may be described as a kind of carved open fretwork—that is to say, the ground is entirely cut away, leaving the pattern standing free. This will form an excellent piece of discipline with regard to the design of background forms, because in such work as this, those forms assert themselves in a very marked manner; ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... his duty to pass the stalls with open lattice ends of carven work in which sat the elder choir-boys. Having secured the key, Laurence hid it instantly beneath the leaden saint on his cap, refastening the long pin which kept our Lady of Luz in her place through the fretwork of the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... compartment of this hall rose into a vaulted roof, enriched with fretwork, and supported, on three sides, by pillars of marble; beyond these, long colonnades retired in gloomy grandeur, till their extent was lost in twilight. The lightest footsteps of the servants, as they advanced through these, were returned ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... diverge, like a cornucopia. The whole of this long vega is a garden, thick with olive-groves and orange trees, with orchards of nespole and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trees that blush in spring, and with flowers as multitudinously brilliant as the fretwork of sunset clouds." ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... new saint, lighted thousands of candles in his honor inside the vast church, and these scintillating lights gave a magical aspect to the edifice. The black arcades, the columns with their capitals, the recessed chapels glittering with gold and silver, the galleries, the Moorish fretwork, the most delicate features of this delicate carving, were all revealed in the dazzling brightness like the fantastic figures which are formed in a glowing fire. It was a sea of light, surmounted at the end of the church by the gilded choir, where the high altar rose in glory, which rivaled ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... now frantic, The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings The owl his anthem, when the silent quire Lie with their ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... buildings, the spires of city churches and the great cathedral dome were visible, rising up beyond the prison, into the blue sky, and clad in the colour of light summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmosphere their every scrap of tracery and fretwork, and every niche and loophole. All was brightness and promise, excepting in the street below, into which (for it yet lay in shadow) the eye looked down as into a dark trench, where, in the midst of so much ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the sunset and rolling hills, and were overwhelmed with the volume of colour. Bosky trees lined the road, and the orange light came through the fretwork of their leaves and branches, and made the dust rising from the cattle and the people on the red roads and the deep shadows all aglow with warm, sombre colour; I would I could remember it exactly. One figure I ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... last train came from the city, she put a lighted candle in her front window, using always the candlestick of solid silver, covered with fretwork in intricate design. If Winfield was there, she managed to have him and Ruth in another room. At half-past ten, she took it away, sighing softly as ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... tomb the carved stone fretwork Was at Easter-tide put on. Then the Duchess closed her labours; And she died at ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... From the wooded knolls hereabouts a view is gained of the broad plains of the Champagne, dotted with white villages and scattered homesteads among the poplars and the limes, the winding Vesle glittering in the sunlight, and the dark towers of Notre Dame de Reims, with all their rich Gothic fretwork, rising ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... young lady that the town could hardly contain her. She married Mortimer Conklin, took him to the Centennial on a wedding trip, came home, rebuilt her father's house, covering it with towers and minarets and steeples, and scroll-saw fretwork, and christened it Winthrop Hall. She erected a store building on Main Street, that Mortimer might have a luxurious office on the second floor, and then settled down to the serious business of life, which was building up a titled aristocracy in ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... form, and a new system of relief came into use. Ornament, instead of being gathered up into forcible projections relieved against retiring planes, and instead of having its surfaces modulated all over with delicate gradations of shade, was spread over a given space in an even fretwork. Such a highly developed member as the capital, for instance, was thought of first as a simple, solid form, usually more or less the shape of a bowl, and the carving was spread out over the general surface, the background being sunk into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... wood. They told the tale of the family tree by the coats of arms and the shields emblazoned by the cutter of wood, sometimes being enriched with colour; at others the picture forms were created by inlaying and superadding fretwork. There were intricate carvings of the Sheraton and Chippendale periods, and there were the wonderful floral sprays, cherubs, and other ornaments so cunningly wrought by Grinling Gibbons and his followers. Wooden ornament in those days took the form of over-doors, and wreaths running down the lintels; ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... workshop—the bustle, the hurry, the glare and shadow, the steam and sparks of Vulcanian forging. The results, it is true, are by no means confused or disorderly—neither were those of the forges that worked under Lipari—but there certainly went much more to them than the dainty fingering of a literary fretwork-maker or the dull rummagings of a realist a ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... example, rise pulpits finer than those of Pisa or Siena. Their edges seem to be of purest jasper. They are upheld by tapering shafts resembling richly decorated organ-pipes. From parapets of porphyry hang gold stalactites, side by side with icicles of silver. Moreover, all its marvelous fretwork is distinctly visible, for the light film of water pulsates over it so delicately that it can no more hide the filigree beneath than a thin veil ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... before him a high-heaped assemblage of red-tiled roofs, and above them rose the fretwork of a soaring Gothic spire. A narrow river half encircled the town, and a battered old bridge, guarded by a round-towered gateway, led out into the open country towards a horizon bounded by a low range of blue hills. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... visible from end to end. This nave is absolutely empty. Every thing tells of expectation, of anticipation. The mighty Lombard pillars on either side—supporting a triforium gallery of circular arches and slender pillars of marble fretwork, delicate as lace—are wreathed and twined with red taffetas bound with golden bands. The gallery of the triforium itself is draped with arras and rich draperies. Each dainty column is decked with flags ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot |
