"Filigree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... white cotton-cloth cloak, called a shama, having a broad scarlet border, and, in addition, a lion-skin tippet with long tails. On their right side hangs a curved sword in a red leather scabbard, and a richly ornamented hilt, while a hide shield, ornamented with gold filigree bosses, and with silver plates, is worn on the left arm, and a long spear is grasped in the right hand. The most invincible enemies of the Amharas have been the heathen tribes of the Gallas, inhabiting the regions to the south of Abyssinia. At the end of last century, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of pink and pearl Frescoed with filigree silver-white, Down in the silence beneath the sea God by Himself must have fashioned thee Just for His ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... brother, was long, lanky and loose-jointed, and seemed to desire to accentuate these effects. Her ash-coloured hair was parted and drawn loosely down to a huge knot at the back of her neck. A band of gilt filigree was round her head at the temples, and was set with a huge green stone which rested in the middle of her forehead. Long barbaric earrings dangled and shook with every movement of her head, and round her somewhat scrawny neck ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... old stories reminds me that I have something that may interest architects and perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noon-day nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... carved capital with six amethysts between repousse oak-leaves, and is jointed to a circular boss surrounded with four vertical bands enriched with cairngorms, while between the bands are carbuncles set off by filigree work. There are also silver bosses at the joints of the ebony portions of ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... valley was a great cluster of palaces that appeared to be built of crystal and silver and mother-of-pearl, and golden filigree-work. So dainty and beautiful were these fairy dwellings that Twinkle had no doubt for an instant but that she gazed upon fairyland. She could almost see, from the far mountain upon which she stood, the airy, gauze-winged forms of the fairies themselves, floating gently amidst their ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... got nothing for his pains. Mateo says that they often make a dollar a day, each. Passing under the Tower of Comares and along the battlements of the Alhambra, we climbed up to the Generalife. This charming villa is still in good preservation, though its exquisite filigree and scroll-work have been greatly injured by whitewash. The elegant colonnades surround gardens rich in roses, myrtles and cypresses, and the fountains that lulled the Moorish Kings in their summer idleness still pour their fertilizing streams. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... forest. The trees grew so thickly and their foliage spread so widely that I could see nothing of the moon-light save that here and there the high branches made a tangled filigree against the starry sky. As the eyes became more used to the obscurity one learned that there were different degrees of darkness among the trees—that some were dimly visible, while between and among them ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... accompanied Clive's household in the journey upon which those poor folks were bound. What stolen goods were finally discovered when the family reached foreign parts were found in Mrs. Mackenzie's trunks, not in her daughter's: a silver filigree basket, a few teaspoons, baby's gold coral, and a costly crimson velvet-bound copy of the Hon. Miss Grimstone's Church Service, to which articles, having thus appropriated them, Mrs. Mackenzie henceforward ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consequence: large bulky men wrapped in fresh muslins and reclining side by side on muslin-covered divans and cushions. Black slaves had placed before them brass trays with pots of mint-tea, glasses in filigree stands, and dishes of gazelles' horns and sugar-plums, and they sat serenely absorbing these refreshments and gazing with large calm eyes upon the motionless water and the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... left the stable, his work done. Beside the yard gate there stood a locust tree, and on a bough of this, midway up, for he never goes to the tree-tops at this season, David saw a cardinal. He was sitting with his breast toward the clear crimson sky; every twig around him silver filigree; the whole tree glittering with a million gems of rose and white, gold and green; and wherever a fork, there a hanging of snow. The bird's crest was shot up. He had come forth to look abroad upon this strange wreck of nature and peril to his kind. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... confused way in all things, produces at the right moment in Parlementary harangue, a pocket Crucifix, with the apostrophe: "Will ye crucify him afresh?" Him, O D'Espremenil, without scruple;—considering what poor stuff, of ivory and filigree, he ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... violent crimson of bougainvillaea, or fringed with tassels of wistaria, loop on loop of amethysts. High above these windows, which framed flowery pictures, were other windows, little and jewelled, mere plaques of filigree workmanship, fine as carved ivory or silver lace, and lined with coloured glass of delicate tints—gold, lilac, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you may imagine me with my hair uncurled, without white gloves, pale as usual. The cell is in the shape of a coffin, high, and full of dust on the vault. The window small, before the window orange, palm, and cypress trees. Opposite the window, under a Moorish filigree rosette, stands my bed. By its side an old square thing like a table for writing, scarcely serviceable; on it a leaden candlestick (a great luxury) with a little tallow-candle, Works of Bach, my jottings, and old scrawls ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... been cut down, and was brought into the library. As soon as it was set up, the work of decoration began, and it was hung with strings of popcorn, and tinsel filigree which Mrs. Warner had saved from previous Christmas trees. Dozens of candles too, were put on the branches, to be lighted ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... ever held the reins of social and domestic management, exercising authority wisely and well within the wide area deputed to feminine sway. The Fair of Paja-Kombo is a treasury of native Art in most delicate filigree, silver-threaded cloth, baskets or fans of scented grass, and the heavy jewellery of burnished brass which copies the designs of the many golden heirlooms treasured by Sumatran womanhood. Streets of palm-thatched stalls, alleys of eating-houses, and ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the earth seems with diamonds today, Gemming all nature in blazing array; A picture more fairy-like never could be Than this wonderful icicle filigree. ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... elsewhere, particularly a flat band in the form of a pilaster, enriched with losenges, which is attached to the front of one of the columns, and is continued over the roof, and again down the pillar on the opposite side. Mr. Turner noticed a small gallery, or pulpit, of elegant filigree stone-work, at the west end, near the roof;[188] and, upon the authority of the well-known antiquary, John Carter, he supposed it most probably intended to receive a band of singers on high festivals. But some corresponding erections in England would ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six soiled cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... thus describes it in a letter of that year to Mr. Conway. "You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:- ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... with such Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood, in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these accumulations. She was constantly changing ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... pocket-book, shiny with years, shook from it a shower of receipts, newspaper clippings, verses. She let them lie. She took out a long violet box with a perfumer's seal upon it. It held a bunch of dried violets. She took out a bonbonniere of gold filigree. It was empty. A powder box, a glove box, a froth of lace, a handful of jewelers' boxes, a jewel flung loose into the drawer. This she pounced upon. It was a brooch! She let it fall—turned to the chiffonier; upended the two vases of Venetian glass, lifted the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... my father told me. In consequence of the treachery of these workmen Germany also soon learned how to make mirrors, and the fame of the Venetian artisans declined just as the Council had predicted it would. But it will be long before any other country can equal mine in the making of filigree or spun glass. You will, senorita, see much of this beautiful work while you are here ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... box, adorned with mirrors, with a velvet rail that seemed made expressly for her light gloves, her ivory opera-glass, and her spangled fan. The tawdry glitter of the theatre, the red and gold of the hangings, were genuine splendor to her. She bloomed among them like a pretty paper flower in a filigree jardiniere. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... say—with scores of menials to wait on you and anticipate your every want? That is, I must explain, every want compatible with—ahem!—the captive condition. Would you be happy in your confinement, practising with the dumb-bells, riding up and down the floors on a bicycle and gazing at pictures and filigree caskets and big malachite vases and eating dinners of many, many courses? Or would you begin to wish that you might be allowed to live on sixpence a day—and earn it; and even envy the ragged tramp who dines on a ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's nest, a clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawn in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem was a light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes—minute they looked from above—rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the specula, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Tiny facets of glass were crusted into grass-green cement, shining like a thousand eyes, and, seated on a vermilion lacquer dais, a Buddha, with heavy eyelids that hid his strange eyes, presided over an illumination of smoking flame. The smell of joss-sticks was heavy on the air, and the filigree cloak worn by the Buddha was enriched with red and green glass that ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... cruising in the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... melancholy, whence thou hast already fished out Bertha, and come back with thy tresses dishevelled, like a girl who has been ill-treated by a regiment of soldiers! Where are thy golden aiglets and bells, thy filigree flowers of fantastic design? Where hast thou left thy crimson head-dress, ornamented with precious gewgaws that cost ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... might be seen, at which oxen were roasting. Anise-sprinkled loaves alternated with great cheeses heavier than discuses, crateras filled with wine, and cantharuses filled with water, together with baskets of gold filigree-work containing flowers. Every eye was dilated with the joy of being able at last to gorge at pleasure, and songs were ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... their heads, and a gauze cloud passed over their bright eyes as smoke over a starry sky. Some of these Persians wore leathern belts embroidered with pearls, from which hung little triangular bags. From these bags, embroidered with golden filigree, they drew long narrow bands of scarlet silk, on which were braided verses of the Koran. These bands, which they held between them, formed a belt under which the other dancers darted; and, as they passed each verse, following the precept it contained, they either prostrated themselves on the earth ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... looking at the filigree basket he held in his hand as if he picked this word out from one of its many interstices. "She was French, and after once finding her, I had but little difficulty in learning all she had to tell. She had been Miss Harrison's maid, but she was not ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... come to the edge of the Serpentine, on which there lay an ethereal film of baby ice almost like frosted gauze. The leafless trees, with their decoration of filigree, suggested the North and its peculiar romance—nature trailing away into the mighty white solitudes where the Pole star reigns over ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... ore, and quicksilver are leading exports. Of these the United States purchases wine and raisins for home consumption and lace and filigree work for the trade with Mexico. Spain has a considerable trade in cotton goods with her colonies, the Canary Islands, and the African provinces of Rio de Oro ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... woman, whose age none might venture to guess. An artless admiration of the absent Miss Justine's photographed charms, caused a faint glow to flicker upon the ancient maiden's cheek. When Alan Hawke drew forth a hideous carbuncle and Indian filigree bracelet (an old relic of bazaar haunting), the thin lips of the preceptress parted in ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste-board, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... his back toward her. She could see the shape of it, pale in its light-colored shirt, against the dark filigree of shrubs at the bottom of the steps. His answer sounded indifferent between ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... downwards through the roof of the church its total perpendicular diameter may well be about a hundred and fifty feet. It is produced by one of Mendelssohn's "Lieder ohne Woerte," and is characteristic of the delicate filigree-work which so often appears as the result ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... you said, 'that you shall restore to me a small, antique clasp, made of a cornelian set in a filigree mount. It came to me from my mother; and every one knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too. Since the day when it vanished from my jewel-case, I have had nothing but unhappiness. Restore it to me, my ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... noticed the ash-twigs up in the sky were pale and luminous, passing into the blue. And then I saw the peacocks. There they were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats opening their feathers ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... regions of every-day commercial life; the carpet bazaars decorated with their Oriental manufactures of all colours; the Khan Khalili, wherein the Persian, Spanish, Jewish, and Turkish merchants offer for sale their stock of jewels, silks, brass-work, etc.; the silver bazaar, where the finest filigree work is pressed upon prospective buyers. He brushed shoulders with shoe-sellers, the pistachio-sellers, and the water-carriers, who assure all who choose to listen that theirs is "Water sweet as honey! ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Fierce kruelega. Fiery fervorega. Fife fifro. Fig figo. Fight batali. Figure (represent) figuri. Figure (cipher) cifero. Figure (image) figuro. Filament fibro. Filch sxteli. File fajli. File (tool) fajlilo. File (newspapers) legajxo. Filial filia. Filiation genealogio. Filigree filigrano. Fill plenigi. Fillet lumbajxo. Filly cxevalidino. Film membrano, sxeleto. Filter filtrilo. Filth malpurajxo. Filthy malpurega. Fin nagxilo. Final fina. Finally fine. Finance financo. Financial financa. Financier ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... just above the ankle, where they widened out and were slashed at the outer seam, showing thin white drawers, which puffed prettily between the slashes. A gentleman in Los Angeles still has the trimmings for such suit, consisting of three hundred and fifty pieces of silver filigree work. ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... one fancied one could see her floating about in an enormous dressing-gown covered with spots of dirt and grease. Round her neck she wore a great gilt necklace, and on her wrists were splendid bracelets of Genoa filigree work. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... men who had no books, (Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry thought, With here and there a fancy fit to see Wrought in quaint grace in golden filigree,— Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade, (For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 110 And stories now, to suit a public nice, Must be ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... handing it first to Anne, who admired the beautiful filigree work, but it was almost snatched from her by Mrs. Archfield, who wound it twice on her tiny wrist, tried to get it over her head, and did everything but ask for it, till her husband, turning round, said roughly, "Give it back, madam. We ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of blue and white beads that glistened like jewels in the sun, and from them hung a gorgeous filigree cross. "Didst thou ever see a sweeter thing than this?" said he; "and look, here is a comb that even the silversmith would swear was pure silver all the way through." Then, in a soft, wheedling voice, "Canst thou not let me in, my little bird? Sure there are other ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... hung up a pretty silk bag there, placed Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigree easels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run and which was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot and a broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one time prized ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold- dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be got,—lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills,—d—n the cost!" Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,—that air pungent ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... matter. You see the cutting, polishing, and general sale of stones is one of those industries which is entirely dependent upon wealth. If we do not support it, it must languish, which means misfortune to a considerable number of people. The same applies to the gold filigree work which you noticed in the court. Wealth has its responsibilities, and the encouragement of these handicrafts are among the most obvious of them. Here is a nice ruby. It is Burmese, and the fifth largest in existence. I am inclined to think that if it were uncut it would be the second, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... earth-charmed, what mate is he for his former youth? Drunken with the world-lees, what can he do but pourtray nature drunken as well, and consumed with the same fever or stupor that consumes himself, making up with gilding and filigree what he lacks in truth and sincerity? and what comparison shall exist here and between what his youth might or could have done, with a soul innocent and untroubled as heaven's deep calm of blue, gazing on earth with seraph eyes—looking, but not longing—or, in the spirit rapt away before the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... remembered transition, and they were at dinner—where each plate was of two almost imperceptible layers of solid diamond between which was curiously worked a filigree of emerald design, a shaving sliced from green air. Music, plangent and unobtrusive, drifted down through far corridors—his chair, feathered and curved insidiously to his back, seemed to engulf and overpower him as he drank his ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... our pipes, and we three began to play all-fours and euchre, sometimes one pair, sometimes another. As for Mr. Knightley and Starlight, they got out a curious filigree sort of a little card-table and began to play some outlandish game that I didn't know, and to ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... see her, in the loose white morning-gown folded in plaits about the swelling bosom, her slender waist clasped by a flowing blue sash, the dark brown satin bands of her hair confined by a large gold filigree pin, and half concealed by a jaunty little French cap, with the ribbons floating about her pear-shaped ears; and while her soft, dark hazel eyes were bent eagerly toward the solid old skipper, her round, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... picture by Titian or Holbein, and probably, as being the chief glory of some stately cathedral, still more precious, which ought only to be trusted to the gentle hands of a cultivated and scientific artist, connoisseur, and expert. The glass should all be handled as if it were old filigree silver. If the lead is so perished that it is absolutely impossible to avoid taking the glass down, it should be received on the scaffold itself, straight from its place in the stone, between packing-boards lined with sheets of wadding—"cotton-wool"—attached to the boards with size ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... the familiar shrubs disappeared, until the moving bases of those cold mist-mountains were fixed at my very feet. Then said to me the glorious Power, standing in stature as a giant,—'Come! why tarriest thou? Come!'—and instantly there rushed up to us a huge golden throne of light filigree-work, borne upon seven pinions, whereof each was fledged above with feathers fair and white, but underneath they were ribbed batlike, and fringed with black down: and all around fluttered beautiful winged faces, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of the double tuft. The cap was small, and jaunty; trimmed with silk velvet—as is common here with men careful to adorn their persons; but this man's cap was finished off with a jewelled button and golden filigree work. He was dressed in a short jacket with a stand up collar; and that also was covered with golden buttons and with golden button-holes. It was all gilt down the front, and all lace down the back. The rows of buttons were double; and those of the more backward row hung down ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... plays Isabel had ever seen were Salisbury matinees of "As You Like It" and "Julius Caesar." It was not by chance that Hyde introduced her tonight to this filigree comedy, so cynical under its glittering dialogue. He could find no swifter way to present to her le monde ou l'on s'amuse in all its refined and defiant charm. He liked to watch her laugh, he laughed himself and gave a languid clap or two when Madeleine ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... next morning I called upon Count Dandini, the owner of the carriage, and as I passed a jeweller's shop I bought a pair of gold bracelets in Venetian filigree, each five yards long and of rare fineness. I intended them as a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... original builders of that house were short people, or they would have planned the old kitchen a few inches higher. But then I am always knocking my head nearly off against something. I have left gleanings from it on the sharp edges of a thousand swinging signs and on the cruel filigree of as many low-hung chandeliers. My slightly bald spot, due to severe mental effort, or something, if examined closely would be found to resemble an old battlefield in France. But this is digression. As I was saying, Henry Jones ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... shoulders played a floating gloss as of agate, and a river of large pearls, not greatly different in hue from her neck, descended towards her breast. Now and then she raised her head with a peacock-like gesture, and sent a quiver through the ruff which enshrined her like a frame of silver filigree. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Clip. "I rather liked the tall fellow, but I noticed that the other carried a gold filigree fountain pen, had a perfectly dear watch charm, and he talked ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... the people could be watched at work of all kinds, from blacksmithy to finest filigree silver work inlaid with the tiny colored feathers of the brightly colored kingfisher; and from rough carpenter work to the finest ivory carving for which the Chinese are famous. Of course the amount they pay for some of this work ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... judgment more or less, whether you theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;* you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... equipments. Their armor was inlaid and chased with gold and silver. The sheaths of their scimetars were richly labored and enamelled, the blades were of Damascus bearing texts from the Koran or martial and amorous mottoes; the belts were of golden filigree studded with gems; their poniards of Fez were wrought in the arabesque fashion; their lances bore gay bandaroles; their horses were sumptuously caparisoned with housings of green and crimson velvet, wrought with silk and enamelled with gold and silver. All this warlike luxury ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... by an inspiration as he stopped beside some Spanish lace. Clare ought to wear fine lace. The intricate, gauzy web would harmonize with her delicate beauty, but the trouble was that he was no judge of the material. A little farther on, a case of silver filigree caught his eye and he turned over some of the articles. This was work he knew more about, and it was almost as light and fine as the lace. The design was good and marked by a fantastic Eastern grace, for it had come from the Canaries ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... Marguerite is out," he said, as he conducted me into a reception room. The walls were hung with seal-brown draperies. There were richly upholstered chairs and a divan piled high with fluffy pillows. In one corner stood a bookcase of burnished metal filigree. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... slaves, received us at the head of the stairs and ushered us into a large room with a divan round three sides of it. Sweetmeats and water and pipes and coffee were brought as usual, some of the cups and their filigree stands very handsome. We went out to see the town, preceded by a tall black slave in a gorgeous blue velvet jacket, with a great silver stick in his hand. Under his guidance we visited the khans, the bazaar, and the mosque; not only were we allowed to enter the mosque with our shoes on, but ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... are very slovenly in their hair and dress on closer acquaintance, and generally exhibit the traces of their Oriental origin. They are great experts in the making of Maltese lace, for which they have won a world-wide reputation, and their native filigree work is also very famous and very beautiful. Churches (where weddings are celebrated in the evening) are very numerous, and priests and friars are always to be seen in the streets. The boys of our regiment said that Malta was chiefly notable for "yells, ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... diffused her cheeks, her eyes fairly danced. Her dress was of feathery black tulle, and a broad silver ribbon, like an order, went over her shoulders. In the shining black braids glistened fern leaves of silver filigree. Fortunately, Fred and I discovered them—Leonora and her inseparable cavalier, Denis, I mean—in an alcove of roses and jessamines. She admiring the flowers, and he talking with a fervor very easy to read. She listening, as women always listen when the pleader is eloquent. But ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... occasionally shown to them, under proper regulations, and for a small fee. The Sword of State is a most beautiful piece of workmanship, a present from Pope Julius II. to James IV. The scabbard is richly decorated with filigree work of silver, double gilded, representing oak leaves and acorns, executed in {p.211} a taste worthy that classical age in which the arts revived. A draughtsman has been employed to make sketches of these articles, in order ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... married in 1768—has inscribed on its base "The property of Lydia Cario" and "1769." The cover has an undersurface of horn, and the silver on the outer surface is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise shell in a filigree pattern. ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... Frances Howard in the National Portrait Gallery by an unknown artist. It is an odd little face which appears above the elaborate filigree of the stiff lace ruff and under the carefully dressed bush of dark brown hair. With her gay jacket of red gold-embroidered, and her gold-ornamented grey gown, cut low to show the valley between her young breasts, she looks like a child dressed up. If there is no great indication ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Louis Napoleon was stated to be in possesion of the talisman of Charlemagne;—"a small nut, in a gold filigree envelopment, found round the neck of that monarch on the opening of his tomb, and given by the town of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) to Buonaparte, and by him to his favourite Hortense, ci-de-vant Queen of Holland, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... treasure. First came Aurora in her Madonna dress, and was received with acclamations. Then came a footman, then two wondrously-dressed nurses, with their heads a halo of silver filigree pins, one of the nurses bearing the lace-wrapped infant in a white embroidered mantle that fell almost to the floor. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... picture as nearly as I can draw it: a round table with a low centerpiece of orchids in lavenders and pink, old silver candlesticks with filigree shades against the somber wainscoting; nine people, two of them unhappy—Jim and I; one of them complacent—Aunt Selina; one puzzled—Mr. Harbison; and the rest hysterically mirthful. Add one sick Japanese butler and grind in ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... peering; the massive cornices; the heavy corbels carved into ten thousand strange and uncouth fancies; but finer than all, the taper and stately spire, fretted and perforated like some piece of silver filigree, stretches upward towards the sky, its airy pinnacle growing finer and more beautiful as it nears the stars it points to. How full of historic associations is every dark embrasure, every narrow casement around! Here may have stood the great emperor, Charles the Fifth, meditating ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... voice said to be that of the Evil One. The Tziganes—that brown-faced race of gipsy wanderers, the women with their bright-coloured skirts and head-dresses, and the men with the wonderful old silver filigree buttons upon their coats—-had related to him many weird stories regarding Hetzendorf and the meaning of those whispers. Yet none of their stories was so curious as that which Murie had just told him. Similar sounds were ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Walraven dwelt on New York's stateliest avenue, in a big brown-stone palace that was like a palace in an Eastern story, with its velvet carpets, its arabesques, its filigree work, its chairs, and tables, and sofas touched up and inlaid with gold, and cushioned in silks ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... over, a small case-bottle of brandy, in a curious frame of silver filigree, circulated to the guests. I had already taken a small glass of the liquor, and, when it had passed to Mabel and to Cristal and was again returned to the upper end of the table, I could not help ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?— 'God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... in this easy-going land, there are two or three hours of broiling gossip on the glowing pavement before the Sacred Presence is announced by the ringing of silver bells. As the superb structure of filigree gold goes by, a movement of reverent worship vibrates through the crowd. Forgetful of silks and broadcloth and gossip, they fall on their knees in one party-colored mass, and, bowing their heads and beating ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... revealed now through its diaphanous sheen. A string of pearls supported a diamond cross on her breast, and on her left wrist was a watch set in small diamonds and turquoises and carried by a bracelet of gold filigree. She wore only one ring—the ring—and even the slight glance which Curtis gave it brought a vivid blush to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... silver birch came floating along, doubtless a windfall from one of those trees that stood where Thriepmuir was but the Bavelaw burn, a furtive trickle among the moss-hags, a brown rushy confusion between two moors. It was as bright as any flower with its yellow leaves, and as fine as filigree; and its preservation of this brightness and fineness through all the angry river's tumbling gave it an air of brave integrity. She watched it benignly, and peered beneath the bridge to see if it would have the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... satins that I blinked my eyes before her dazzlements. What made it worse was that there was a comb—as she called it, though I should in my ignorance have thought it some rich and rare work in filigree belonging to an empress—which, owing to the smallness of her mirror and the poor light, she could not get to sit perfectly in its golden cushion, and I was bidden to put it where and as it ought to be. I was a long time over the task, in part because ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... two minutes' hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off without touching the body with the axe; he was not mistaken—it was a purse. On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus wood and one of copper, and an image in silver filigree, and with them a small greasy chamois leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The purse was stuffed very full; Raskolnikov thrust it in his pocket without looking at it, flung the crosses on the old woman's ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Bacchiacca drew a filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing pages 84 and 85.) These men at that time (1550) had set ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... was busy with some fancy-work, in which she seemed bent on making great progress this morning. Captain Wybrow sat opposite with a newspaper in his hand, from which he obligingly read extracts with an elaborately easy air, wilfully unconscious of the contemptuous silence with which she pursued her filigree work. At length he put down the paper, which he could no longer pretend not to have exhausted, and Miss Assher then said,—'You seem to be on very ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... called the English women "lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716, taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, Marking, Queen Stitch ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... that Pope, though not our greatest, not even perhaps a great, poet is incomparably our most brilliant versifier. Dryden's strength turns in his work into something more fragile and delicate, polished with infinite care like lacquer, and wrought like filigree work to the last point of conscious and perfected art. He was not a great thinker; the thoughts which he embodies in his philosophical poems—the Essay on Man and the rest, are almost ludicrously out of proportion to the solemnity of the titles which introduce them, nor does he except ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... he wrote: "It is impossible to forget the fact that in his piano works he was first and foremost a piano virtuoso, a child prodigy: of whom filigree work (we cannot call this Orientalism, for it was more or less of German pattern, traced from the fioriture of the Italian opera singer) was expected by the public for which his sonatas were written.... We need freshness and ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the defect of Stevenson is expressed by these very qualities, fancy and ingenuity, because they are contradictory, and the second destroys the first. Be this as it may, there are many people whose pleasure is not spoiled by elaboration and filigree work. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... antique arms and filigree silver-ware upon us; but we ever looked elsewhere, and Jo suddenly pounced on a handkerchief, or rather a conglomeration of bits sewn together, each being a remnant of ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... dinners of Sidonia. At no house was there less parade. The appearance of the table changed as if by the waving of a wand, and silently as a dream. And at this moment, the dessert being arranged, fruits and their beautiful companions, flowers, reposed in alabaster baskets raised on silver stands of filigree work. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Bello Sguardo. The gentle, beautiful chain of hills which encircle Florence smile cheerfully in the sunshine, clapping their hands and skipping like lambs, if little hills ever did make such a demonstration. These environs of the town are like a frame of golden filigree, almost too fantastic a one for so shadowy and sombre a city. The green hill-sides and plains are sown thickly with palaces and villas glancing whitely through silvery forests of olives and myrtle; while the distant Apennines, like guardian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... prelude at all dinners in New France. A salmon speared in the shallows of the Chaudiere, and a dish of blood-speckled trout from the mountain streams of St. Joachim, smoked upon the board. Little oval loaves of wheaten bread were piled up in baskets of silver filigree. For in those days the fields of New France produced crops of the finest wheat—a gift which Providence has since withheld. "The wheat went away with the Bourbon lilies, and never grew afterwards," ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... almost disused throughout Spain, far surpasses in elegance the prevailing costumes of the nineteenth century: a short light jacket of black velvet, and waistcoat of the richest silk, both profusely decorated with gold filigree buttons; purple velvet breeches fastened at the knee with bunches of ribands; silk stockings, and falling boots of chamois leather, by the most expert maker in Cordova; a crimson silk sash round his waist, and round his neck ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the verdant sod, The moon-rays shimmered o'er the spangled lea, And taught the soul the eloquence of God, Tinging the far horizon o'er the sea With silver film and sheeny filigree, While o'er the gray expanse with trembling wing The ling'ring zephyr hovered sleepily, And faintly breathed o'er every dormant thing Its soft, sad benediction. This ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... their filigree, Can hidden spirits in it be? There haunts me something awing ... You finer birch, you snow unstained, You purer air,—a soul you've gained? Who is it ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... is now but a murky fissure, from which the groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet, indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street is one of ghosts to whosoever can ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... disappears and reappears, almost on the same spot, but higher up on the mountain, and then glides rapidly on along the brinks of fearful abysses, over long iron bridges looking like some fanciful filigree work, some giant spider's web, extending across great valleys, chasms, and precipices, over which great mountain rivers splash down, roaring and foaming in gigantic falls. What giant power has cleft the way for these waters—Vulcan or Neptune? Or was it ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... which the ashes grew as freely as on flat ground. Their feet were bedded deep in sweet fern and wild raspberries, and golden-rod, and purple scabious, and tall blue campanulas. Above them, and before them, and below them, the ashes shook their green filigree in the bright sunshine; and through them glimpses were seen of the purple cliffs above, and, right in front, of the great cataract of Nant Gwynnant, a long snow-white line zigzagging down coal-black cliffs for many a hundred feet, and above it, depth beyond depth of purple shadow away into the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... picnic, completely overgrown with wild grape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way are mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pictures that were dazzling, for Viennese women are adepts in the art of dress, as are their Parisian sisters. Tea was served, not in cups and saucers, as Jennie had been accustomed to seeing it handed round, but in goblets of clear, thin Venetian glass, each set in a holder of encrusted filigree gold. There were all manner of delicious cakes, for which the city is celebrated. The tea itself had come overland through Russia from China and had not suffered the deterioration which an ocean voyage produces. The decoction was served clear, with sugar if desired, and a slice ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... The real-lace fichu was fastened at the waist with an amethyst pin and at her throat she wore a string of silver beads. Her white hair was beautifully dressed, and somewhere, among the smooth coils and fluffy softness, one caught the gleam of a filigree silver comb. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... shelf above her escritoire, and between the candlesticks was a photograph in a filigree silver frame. Towards this she looked every now and then, in the pauses of her writing, with a happy, trustful expression of quiet love. During one pause she noticed that her little clock pointed to 8.30. 'Jim will just be going on,' she said to herself. Yes, that photograph ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... you. You owe me five dollars you borrowed ten years ago, an' you never caught a half pound perch in yo' life that you didn't tell us the nex' day it was a fo' pound trout. So set down. Oh, I'm tellin' the truth without any filigree, Dave." ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... to elect a spokesman, as I could not deal with all at once, and Muhammad abu Hasan was pushed forward. He squatted, facing me, upon the ground, his men behind him. The twigs and leaves of olives overhead spread a filigree of moving shade upon their puckered faces. They were evidently ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the Thames, and those lying immediately to the west of it, contain huge warehouses and bonded stores, which are filled to suffocation with the "wealth of nations." Dirty streets and narrow lanes here lead to the fountain-head of wealth untold—almost inconceivable. The elegant filigree-work of West End luxury may here be seen unsmelted, as it were, and in the ore. At the same time the rich substances on which fire feeds and fattens are stored here in warehouses which (as they are) should never have been built, and ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... sorry when he went, as I wished to show my presents to Virginia, and give her those which she liked best. When Virginia had selected for herself, or rather I had forced upon her all she most admired, I gave a cut ivory card-case, a filigree needle-case, and a small red scarf to my mother, who, for the first time in her life, appeared pleased with me, and said that they were very genteel, and she was much obliged to me. The remainder I put away in my room upstairs, intending to keep some for Bessy, and give the others ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... mantel-piece, and upon the carved wooden shelf, amongst tobacco-jars and little curios, cotillion favors and the like, there were scattered a number of photographs. One of these was that of a girl who looked straight out at you from a filigree frame; there was hardly a corner of the room where you could have stood without her clear, serious eyes seeming to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the several parts of it are distinguished; the entablature, wedged between two of the old pillars of the choir, and appearing to rest upon light columnar buttresses of singular beauty, give us an assemblage of filigree and fretwork, which may vie with the finest specimens of similar workmanship in the kingdom: the elegant palm-leaved parapet, which occurs in the division between the storeys,—the numerous escutcheons blazoned in their proper colours,—the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... laid thin, Like a scarlet skin On an ivory fruit; And a filigree frost Of frail notes lost ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... for a long, aching, exquisitely silent moment, her hand in his, the great square emerald set in a wonderful filigree and scrolling of gold on her finger, the other thing gleaming with a baleful light between them. Then the spell broke with the roll of carriage wheels on the drive. A minute later, Mrs. Ozanne came into the veranda, Rosalie ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... goldsmith. Upon the roof of the first is inscribed in enamelled letters the best wish—"joy be with you"—that a newly-married couple would command. The same words are inscribed in more richly-designed letters on the curve of the second ring. Both are of gold, richly chased, enamelled, and enriched by filigree work, and are sufficiently stately for the most ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... en prie," cried Peter, with a gesture of gallantry; and he led her to one of the round marble tables. "Due caffe," he said to the brilliant creature (chains, buckles, ear-rings, of silver filigree, and head-dress and apron of flame-red silk) who ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... when Creede and his cowboys came clattering down the mountain from the east and spurred across the redondo, whooping and yelling as they rounded up their stock. For half an hour they rode and hollered and swore, apparently oblivious of the filigree of sheep tracks with which the ground was stamped; then as the remuda quieted down they circled slowly around their captives, swinging their wide-looped ropes and waiting ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... excitement, for such an amount of pure gold as that already discovered we had never seen before. But the treasure was not yet half exhausted. The jar seemed a perfect mine of wealth—gold chains, plain and of filigree workmanship, each worth from L10 to L30; ornaments of the same metal of every sort of design, and executed in a style for which the Delhi jewellers are celebrated all over India. Then came small silver caskets filled with pearls, together to the number of ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... sturdiness, "—not making horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and cut put the dainty filigree the "Master" sells to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... preface that he adored her, but when he opened his lips a question came forth of its own accord relating to the Persian way of playing billiards. Gertrude had never been in Persia, but had seen some Eastern billiard cues in the India museum. Were not the Hindoos wonderful people for filigree work, and carpets, and such things? Did he not think the crookedness of their carpet patterns a blemish? Some people pretended to admire them, but was not that all nonsense? Was not the modern polished floor, with a rug in the middle, much superior to the old carpet fitted into the corners of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... such clothes as dancers wear; she veiled her face with a costly kerchief; around her head she bound a fine turband, and about her middle she tied a waist cloth worked with gold and silver wherein she stuck a dagger, whose hilt was rich in filigree and jewelry. Thus disguised she said to the slave-boy Abdullah, "Take now thy tambourine that we may play and sing and dance in honour of our master's guest." So he did her bidding and the twain went into the room, the lad playing and the lass following. Then, making a low ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... again and looked out. The mountain was bathed in a wonderful ruby light fading into amethyst, and all the path between was many-colored like a pavement of jewels set in filigree. While she looked the picture changed, glowed, softened, and changed again, making her think of the chapter about the Holy City ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... collection we find several valuable necklaces in gold, coral, and precious stones. Besides the Egyptian, there are some of Etruscan origin, taken from the tombs of this ancient people. We cannot leave this subject without noticing the beauty and perfection of the filigree-work, executed about 2400 years ago, and equal to modern workmanship. Some exquisite specimens from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... occasional coatless man in a red or blue shirt, they wore faded, old, black coats,—frequently frock-coats, at that,—which certainly contrasted unfavourably, at least so far as heightening the gaiety of the scene was concerned, with the green velvet jackets, brilliant waistcoats with gold filigree and silver buttons and red sashes of the Mexicans. That there was not a man present but what was togged out in his best and was armed, it goes without saying, even if the weapons of the Mexicans were in the form of murderous knives concealed somewhere about their persons instead ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should be a little filigree about a woman—something of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at you ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ponderous sideboards covered with choice pottery from Gubbio and Savona, and Lucca della Robbia ware. Sunk in recesses there are dark cupboards filled with mediaeval salvers, goblets, and flagons, gold dishes, and plates, and vessels of filigree and silver. Ivory carvings hang on the walls beside dingy pictures, or are ranged on tables of Sicilian agate and Oriental jasper. Against the walls are also placed cabinets and caskets of carved walnut-wood and ebony inlaid with lapis-lazuli, jasper, and precious stones; also long, narrow ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... glasses with enameled roosters, ruby goblets like blown flowers and little gilt-speckled liqueur glasses; there were knives with steel blades, knives all of silver, and gold fruit knives; there were slim oyster forks, entree forks of solid design, and forks of filigree; a bank of spoons by a plate that would be presently removed, unused, for ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... work-table strewed with reels and scissors, on which lay a child's frock and some stockings. The table was laid for tea. On it were plates piled up with floury scones, delicate beleek saucers full of butter patted thin into the shapes of shells, and jam in coloured glass dishes cased in silver filigree. A large home-baked loaf of soda bread on a wooden platter stood at one end of the table, and near it a sponge-cake. At the other end was an array of cups and saucers with silver spoons that glittered, a jug of cream, and one of milk. Two of the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... hollow of the rock walls overhanging the river opposite Thurston's camp. Each detail of the scene burned itself into her memory as she gazed about her under a tense expectancy—the rift of blue sky between the filigree of dark pines high above, the rush of white-streaked water thundering down the gorge below and frothing high about the massive boulders, and one huge fang of promontory which a touch of her finger would, if all went well, reduce to chaotic ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Latin, written by a German scribe in the eleventh century. The upper cover consists of a carved ivory panel of the thirteenth century, with a border of silver gilt, decorated with filigree work and figures in repousse, and enriched ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... they stood amazed; for here the flutings ran up five hundred feet inside the stupendous central spire, among a marvelous filigree of windows which diminished toward the top—a lacework as of frost-patterns etched into the solid ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... eastward out over the elongated gulf. Looking back, John saw the sandhills by the sea glistening in the bright sunlight like mounds of gold-dust. Every leaf and stem in the scrub stood out in black and silver filigree; and euphorbias and adeniums, gouty and pompous above the lower growths, seemed like fantasies of gray on a Japanese screen covered with cerulean velvet. It was their last sight of Persia, and one not soon to ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the chief first made his appearance, and having come within a few feet, sat down as a mark of respect. He was followed by six more, who each carried about two pounds of wax candles, tastefully arranged in a sort of filigree work of coloured papers. After these came about fifty men, carrying large baskets full of vegetables and fruit, which they poured out on the floor before us, and then walked away and squatted at a distance. A few ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... person bore no similarity to that of the young ladies. In all her splendour and lustre, she looked like a fairy or a goddess. In her coiffure, she had a band of gold filigree work, representing the eight precious things, inlaid with pearls; and wore pins, at the head of each of which were five phoenixes in a rampant position, with pendants of pearls. On her neck, she had a reddish ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... took it over to the porthole. The metal, he then saw, was a soft antique gold, wrought into a decoration of delicate spindles, with a border of filigree. The circlet was beautiful in itself, and astonishingly heavy. But what it chiefly did for Matthews was to sharpen the sense of strangeness, of remoteness, which this bizarre galley, come from unknown waters, had brought into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... an excellent interior, and it will accommodate about twice as many people as patronise it. Long stately side lights, neatly embellised with stained glass and opaque filigree work, give it a mild solemnity which is relieved by fine circular windows occupying the gables. The seats are arranged in the usual three-row style, and there is a touch of neat gentility about them indicative ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Terciis, &c., for her health, and was always received on her return to Bayonne with sovereign honours. The magistrates of the town went, on one occasion, to meet her with offerings of fruit, flowers, expensive wines, hams, and game, all in silver filigree baskets, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... to the others his own mistake in regard to the hour designated upon Mr. Carewe's cards of invitation. This small embarrassment, however, did not prevent General Trumble and young Mr. Chenoweth from coming to high words over Miss Carewe's little, gilt-filigree "programme" of dances. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... novitiate. The fact is that it is an exceedingly dull book: and that to have made it anything else, while retaining anything like its present "propriety," either an entire metamorphosis of spirit, which might have made it as passionate as Manon itself, or the sort of filigree play with thought and phrase which Marivaux would have given, would be required. As a "Crebillonnade" (v. inf.) it might have been both pleasant and subtle, but it could only have been made so by ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... earrings of filigree gold. Round her neck was a massive gold chain. On her fingers sparkled several rings of price—diamonds, rubies and opals. In figure her ladyship was tall, and upright as a dart. She was, however, slightly lame of one foot, which necessitated the use of a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... but I wore on my arm a bracelet that had the advantage of pleasing him. It was a Persian trinket, more singular than beautiful. I can see it now; it was formed of three large plates of gold ornamented with grotesque animals, and joined by a filigree network. I valued this bracelet; it had been brought to me from Teheran. By means of a secret spring, one of the plates opened, and I had had engraved inside the most interesting dates of my life, and underneath them my ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... was clear, save for a few filmy clouds, which floated over the face of the full moon, obscuring it for an instant, but never completely hiding it—like veils in a shadow dance. The spire of the great cathedral was silver filigree on the moonlit side, and on the other side, black lace. The square was empty. But on the broad, shallow steps in front of the main entrance of the cathedral two heroic figures were seated. At first ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... refining daily renders still more scanty. Considered in itself, the classic style is always tempted to accept slight, insubstantial commonplaces for its subject materials. It spins them out, mingles and weaves them together; only a fragile filigree, however, issues from its logical apparatus; we may admire the elegant workmanship; but in practice, the work is of little, none, or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... long colonnade of white stone ornamented with black filigree-work and supported by columns in pairs. The entablature is surmounted by a row of statues, and the end-towers have parapets with balustrade. The colonnade, with a chocolate-brown back wall, affords shelter and relief for bronze ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his original square roof into Coventry spire; but he must not put within his splendid porch, a little door where two persons cannot together get in, nor cut his spire away into hollow filigree, and mere ornamental ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... dance. Perhaps they will let us see how she is dressed. Her head is covered with a head-dress of pink gauze, embroidered with gold thread and purple chenille, and ornamented with pearl beads and artificial flowers, and over all a long white gauze veil trimmed with lace. Her ear-rings are gold filigree work with pendant pearls, and around her neck is a string of pure amber beads and a gold necklace. She wears a jacket of black velvet, and a gilt belt embroidered with blue, and fastened with a silver gilt filigree buckle in the form of a bow knot ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... bright outlook. They could be darkened, during the heat of the day, by shutters. With the exception of these windows, the others throughout the house contained no glass, the light entering through innumerable holes that formed a filigree work in the thin slabs of stone that ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... in stories which read like extracts from an upholsterer's price-list, nor yet those accounts of meals that, after all, are only menus writ large, so it may suffice to say that the saloon of the Grashna was an arrangement of sandal-wood panels, framed in thin silver filigree, and hung with exquisite little masterpieces in water-colour, and black and white, and crayon, mostly sea-scapes, with here and there a beautiful head with living eyes which followed you everywhere; that the rich yellow of the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... larger sacred picture for the convent round the corner, and with finer pencil and more delicate touch he could paint the vellum leaves of a missal;" and so on. If an artistic earthenware platter was to be made, the painter turned to his potter's wheel and to his kiln. If a filigree coronet was wanted, he took up his tools for ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... flapping curtains of the tents. There were enough pretty faces in the crowd to justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth. As he turned from this show Odo's eye was caught by a handsome ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton |
