"Filigree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tapestry and rose-tinted down. Then the blue, black, and brown clouds change quickly to purple, pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky itself forms a background for the dissolving community of interlacing filaments of priceless filigree, till in time too full of interest to compute by measure, the whole heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy of color, a prodigality of shifting scene, making one think of the descriptions essayed by the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... her little dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest, was ornamented with various girlish trifles, framed photographs being not the least conspicuous among them. Sue's table had a moderate show, two men in their filigree and velvet frames ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... grey dawn, passed up a dry watercourse, and proceeded where the vine was queen and there fell a scented filigree of dead blossom from flowering olives. They had seen a million clusters of tiny grapes already rounding and had passed through wedges and squares of cultivated earth, where sprang alternate patches of corn yellowing to harvest and the lush green of growing maize. Figs and almonds ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Banchi, where Luca Pinelli was crucified for opposing a Fregoso Doge who wished to sell Livorno to Florence. Passing thence into the street of the jewellers, Strada degli Orefici, where every sort of silver filigree work may be found, with coral and amber, you come to Madonna of the Street Corner, a Virgin and Child, with S. Lo, the patron of all sorts of smiths, a seventeenth-century work of Piola. These narrow shadowy ways full of men and women and joyful with children are the delight ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... center of the 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 ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... from 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 giants, lift ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... stalls where they sold Mexican drawn-work, carved leather and filigree silver, others again with chairs set round where one could have iced-fruit drinks or coffee, and the band played sonorously and the crowd, good-natured, laughing, gaily dressed, men, women, and children of all sizes, strolled amongst the stalls, buying, looking, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... wooden benches, sculptured mosaic tables and 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 ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the 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 the mills of ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has her darling all to herself—her toy, her plaything—were visible in the large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet dress with its filigree buttons and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of emeralds, pierced, and strung on common string. At her wrists hung a multitude of bangles, and on her bare left arm, near the shoulder, was a gold wire that pinched the flesh, and from it hung a filigree medallion that covered her crest, tattooed beneath the skin. It is always so with the tribe of ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... in the 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 there were coal-black shadowed patches, like the mouths of caves, from which I shrank ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 fields ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... burning coals from the fire with impunity and carry them in his hand. He could then—and this comes nearer to the point at issue—place them on the head of anyone who was fearless without their being burned. Spectators have described how the silver filigree of the hair of Mr. Carter Hall used to be gathered over the glowing ember, and Mrs. Hall has mentioned how she combed out the ashes afterwards. Now, in this case, Home was clearly, able to convey, a power to another person, just as Christ, when He was levitated over the lake, ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... costume is such as certain filibusters then generally adopt when on shore. He wears a waistcoat of rich maroon velvet, with buttons of filigree gold; large Flemish boots of like material and ornamented with the same style of button, which extend the length of the thigh, being met by a belt of orange silk, in which is stuck a poignard richly chased; and, finally, long leggings of white kid embroidered in many colored silks after ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... soul-rusted and 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 ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the collar and skirts, he wore a long gombaz of very dark green silk embossed with tambour work; his sash was of the plainest purple silk, and his sidriyeh or vest was of entire cloth of gold with gold filigree buttons: on the head a plain tarboosh, and in his hand sometimes a cane ornamented with ivory or a rosary of sandal-wood. His gold watch and chain were in ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... often continued for several days together. The young men frequent them in order to look out for wives, and the lasses of course set themselves off to the best advantage. They wear their best silken dresses, of their own weaving, as many ornaments of filigree as they possess, silver rings upon their arms and legs, and ear-rings of a particular construction. Their hair is variously adorned with flowers, and perfumed with oil of benjamin. Civet is also in repute, but more used by the men. To render their skin fine, smooth, and soft they make use of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... quarter once given over to the Spaniard. Here were still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure, the eye saw, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies. Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... to the lid, but there is no sign of hinge or corresponding button. The smaller casket is rectangular, resembling that found at Grado. On the lid is a cross in dark-blue enamel with surroundings of filigree. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... silk, which garniture appeared at the slashes. His doublet was of purple cloth, and his short cloak of black velvet, to correspond with his hose; and both were adorned with a great number of small silver buttons richly wrought in filigree. A triple chain of gold hung round his neck; and, in place of a sword or dagger, he wore at his belt an ordinary knife for the purpose of the table, with a small silver case, which appeared to contain writing materials. He might have seemed some secretary or clerk engaged in the service ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... cotton, brass dishes, and slippers, or change money, or are ready for anything in the shape of barter. Seated in the shade of that small niche in the wall, as on a tailor's shop-board, is an adool, or public notary, selling advice to a client; in the alcove next him is a worker in beads and filigree; from a dusty forge beyond comes the clang of anvils, where half-naked smiths are hammering out bits or fashioning horse-shoes. Mules with Bedouins perched, chin on shin, amid the bales of merchandise on their backs, cross the bazaar at every moment; or files of donkeys, stooping under bundles ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... displayed keen, blue eyes in a background of perpetual fire. His large, swollen nose had a vinous tint, acquiring purplishness in cold weather. Tiny red veins, as numerous as the cracks in Satsuma-ware, spread across both cheeks in a carmine filigree. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... after a weary time, in such a glory of silks and 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 ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... 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 their Flemish looms ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... 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
... prohibitions, in that slough of 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 a minot ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— 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 came ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Italy, most of the oxen having yokes which a Berkshire hog of any pretensions to good breeding would disdain to look through. These yokes merely hold the meek animals together, having no adaptation to draft, which is obtained by a cobbling filigree of ropes around the head, bringing the heaviest of the work upon the horns! The gear is a little better than this—as little as you please—while for Carts and Waggons there are few school-boys of twelve to fifteen ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... crying in her aunt's grip was Louie. White trailing folds swept behind her; a white garment underneath, apparently her nightgown, was festooned with an old red-and-blue striped sash of some foreign make. Round her neck hung a necklace of that gold filigree work which spreads from Genoa all along the Riviera; her magnificent hair hung in masses over her shoulders, crowned by the primroses of the morning, which had been hurriedly twisted into a wreath by a bit of red ribbon rummaged out of some drawer of odds-and-ends; ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... second wife, Lydia Croxford, whom he 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
... ringed and barred and plated with silver from end to end, but it was as desperately out of the perpendicular as are the billiard cues of '49 that one finds yet in service in the ancient mining camps of California. The muzzle was eaten by the rust of centuries into a ragged filigree-work, like the end of a burnt-out stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within—it was flaked with iron rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed the ponderous pistols and snapped them. They were rusty inside, too—had not been loaded for a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a dozen different nations. From the other they caught glimpses of the magnificent old city, rising in tier over tier of churches and palaces and gardens; while nearer still were narrow streets, which glittered with gold filigree and the shops of jewel-workers. And while they went in and out and gazed and wondered, Lilly Page, at the Pension ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... "No," she said; "he reminded me of that Florentine filigree thing. It's very pretty, and I bought it for silver, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... long 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 ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... went and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give his card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like that? And Fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started out like a filigree figure from a clock when the hour strikes. On the screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-coloured blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he sat. He looked at his catalogue: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of materials that have been used for making buttons is very large—metals such as brass and iron for the cheaper kinds, and for more expensive ones, gold and silver, sometimes ornamented with jewels, filigree work, &c.; ivory, horn, bone and mother-of-pearl or other nacreous products of shell-fish; vegetable ivory and wood; glass, porcelain, paper, celluloid and artificial compositions; and even the casein of milk, and blood. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Testament in 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 with crystals ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... colouring of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green, the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of leafless trees.—This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and stimulated rather than merely soothed. To feel the harsh, untainted wind break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of the roadside and sturdy spires of heath, to see it toss the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Maisie; "you'd never tell one from the other, would you? Mine's a tiny bit heavier, don't you think? I've just found it in the soap-dish. I'll change this for a filigree pendant. All my life I've longed for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... 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 very ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... part in their degree Gave gladly gifts of pride, Tall silver ships, complete with sea, And birds of aureate filigree, Pearl-winged and opal-eyed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... On the 1st of April, the English merchants of Seville, with their Consul, presented us with a quantity of chocolate and as much sugar, with twelve fine sarcenet napkins laced thereunto belonging, with a very large silver pot to make it in, and twelve very fine cups to drink it out of, filigree, with covers of the same, with two very large salvers to set them upon, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... 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 of good construction, whatever the parties they have been made for are like. Fashionably-conceived ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... 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! Water from the spring!" and in a commanding voice invite you to "Drink, O faithful! ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... was bound with a ukal, or fillet of camel's-hair; his burnous, also silk, showed tenderest shades of lavender and rose. Under its open folds could be seen a violet jacket with buttons of filigree ivory. He had handed his gun to the man behind him, and now was unarmed save for a gadaymi, or semicircular knife, thrust into his silk sash of crimson, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... and we rapidly approached the island. It proved to be utterly precipitous. The high rounded hills sloped easily to within a hundred feet or so of the water and then fell away abruptly. Where the earth ended was a fantastic filigree border, like the fancy paper with which our mothers used to line the pantry shelves. Below, the white surges flung themselves against the cliffs with a wild abandon. Thousands of sea birds wheeled in the eddies of the wind, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 Judge • Rebecca West
... extends 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 ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... usual ornament 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 ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... needs have utterly outshone the other. All that Mr. Pallinson wanted was opportunity; and that being now afforded him, he looked upon the happy issue of events as a certainty, and already contemplated the house in Cavendish-square, the Indian jars and cabinets, the ivory chessmen and filigree-silver rosewater-bottles, the inlaid desks and Japanese screens, the ponderous plate and rare old wines, with a sense ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... said at the church-door, and the only abnormal thing about the leave-taking was Barrett's gift to the bride, pressed into her hand as we were getting into the carriage to go to the railroad station—a silver filigree hand-bag stuffed heavy with five- and ten-dollar gold pieces, "to be blown in on the wedding journey," as he ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... a 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. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... which she sat, and looked out on the tide of river life as it flowed by. She was covered at present with a dressing gown, as sweet and fresh as the morning air. On her head she wore a small net of the finest golden filigree, and her tiny feet were thrust into a pair of bright blue slippers bordered with swans-down. "Am I to come back?" her obedient father had asked. But he had been told not to come back, not quite at present. "It is not that I want your absence," ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... strange youth might come riding out of the east, sitting a sorrel horse with a star and a white hind ankle, a long rangy neck and strong quarters; and he—the youth—would wear a broad, gray hat, with a band of silver filigree, a scarlet kerchief at his throat, a scarlet sash at his waist, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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
... which—St. Alexandre, St. Andre, St. Pascal, St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on—sound like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, passing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved and writhed, so that we understood when some ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... that was surrounded by the wings of the great castle but had no roof, and was filled with flowers and fountains and exquisite statuary and many settees and chairs of polished marble or filigree gold. Here there were gathered fifty beautiful young girls, Glinda's handmaids, who had been selected from all parts of the Land of Oz on account of their wit and beauty and sweet dispositions. It was a great honor to be ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... our hands trembling and our eyes ablaze with 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 more than 200, each worth from L3 to ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... sight to 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, rosy, dimpled fingers clasped ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... to the spot wherein you command the first general survey of this unparalleled front. The delicacy, the finish, the harmonious intricacy, and faery-like lightness, of the whole—even to the summit of the spire;—which latter indeed has the appearance of filigree work, raised by enchantment, and through the interstices of which the bright blue sky appears with a lustre of which you have no conception in England—all this, I say, perfectly delights and overwhelms you. You want words to express your ideas, and the extent of your gratification. You feel ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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
... adornment. Oh, the sweet little piper piping only for Pan! The loneliness of the place was accentuated by the sad cadenzas of the mountain hermit thrushes. Swallows of some kind—cliff-swallows, no doubt—were silently weaving invisible filigree across the sky above the tops ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... described as a sort of boudoir extracted from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood. The front room was filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages; French bronzes, wonderful boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects. The apartment ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... where a wild waterfall "leapt in glory." These places in winter were glorified with the fine arts of ice,—"frozen music," as some one has defined architecture,—for here winter had constructed from water a wondrous array of columns, panels, filigree, fretwork, relief-work, arches, giant icicles, and stalagmites as large as, and in ways resembling, a big tree with a fluted full-length ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... in its evening tones; these are translucent and glowing from the setting of the sun until the stars appear. In Greece we are dreamers in that subtle atmosphere, and in Egypt visionaries under the spell of an ethereal loveliness where the filigree patterning of white dome and minaret and interlacing palm and feathery pepper tree leaves little wonder in the mind that the ornamentation of their architecture is so ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... cloth resembled brocaded satin. The knives and forks were gold, with handles of solid amber. The dishes were of the finest porcelain. Some of them, particularly the fruit stands, looked as though composed of hoar frost. Many of the fruit stands were of gold filigree work. They attracted my notice at once, not so much on account of the exquisite workmanship and unique design of the dishes, as the wonderful fruit they contained. One stand, that resembled a huge African lily in design, contained several varieties of plums, as large as ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... stories reminds me that I have something which 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 noonday nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While I was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall ascend day and night through the arches of his funeral monument. What are the poor dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of spikes that stand at the corners of St. Genevieve's filigree-cased sarcophagus to this perpetual offering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... every keystone of which some grim, grotesque head is 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 ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of the Giralda, the cathedral tower at Seville, is a square of fifty feet. The pinnacle of the filigree belfry, which surmounts the original Moorish tower, "is crowned with El Girardillo, a bronze statue of La Fe, The Faith.... Although 14 feet high, and weighing 2800 lbs., it turns with the slightest breeze."—Ford's Handbook ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... consists of the following parts. A close waistcoat, without sleeves, but having a neck like a shirt, buttoned close up to the top, with buttons, often of gold filigree. This is peculiar to the Malays. Over this they wear the baju, which resembles a morning gown, open at the neck, but generally fastened close at the wrists and halfway up the arm, with nine buttons to each sleeve. The sleeves, however, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the dwellings of these northern aborigines, and look almost solemn ranged against the wall. In this house there are twenty-four lacquered urns, or tea-chests, or seats, each standing two feet high on four small legs, shod with engraved or filigree brass. Behind these are eight lacquered tubs, and a number of bowls and lacquer trays, and above are spears with inlaid handles, and fine Kaga and Awata bowls. The lacquer is good, and several of the urns have daimiyo's crests ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... hand of the Sultan sat his two sons, while his right was occupied by his councillors; just behind him, sat the carrier of his betel-nut casket. The casket was of filigree silver, about the size of a small tea-caddy, of oblong shape, and rounded at the top. It had three divisions, one for the leaf, another for the nut, and a third for the lime. Next to this official was the pipe-bearer, who did ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... be said in favour of Hayley's attempt, but that it is better than Boyd's. His mind was a tolerable specimen of filigree work,—rather elegant, and very feeble. All that can be said for his best works is that they are neat. All that can be said against his worst is that they are stupid. He might have translated Metastasio tolerably. But he was utterly unable to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be found 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 make it seem more likely that this gallery communicated ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... little clock of filigree gilt—stood on the shelf at the foot of the bed; and as the Lady in Black looked at it she remembered the wave of anger that had surged over her when she had thrust out her hand and silenced it that night three months before. It had seemed ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 curled silver vapour, To lust of His mind:- ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... which show the 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
... great white palace, with ceiling and walls of filmy glittering webs. The long, delicate strands of gray moss which draped themselves from tree to tree and branch to branch were each one converted into threads of crystal, forming a filigree lacework, infinitely beautiful. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... cavern, the roof of which was higher than a church steeple. In this space the industrious nomes had built, during many years of labor, the most beautiful forest in the world. The trees—trunks, branches and leaves—were all of solid gold, while the bushes and underbrush were formed of filigree silver, virgin pure. The trees towered as high as natural live oaks do and were ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and with a strong sense of beauty. The outer walls of the annex of the Hotel Aquila Nera are covered with frescoes of marked power and originality, painted by the son of the innkeeper. The art schools of Cortina are famous for their beautiful work in gold and silver filigree, and wood-inlaying. There are nearly two hundred pupils in these schools, all peasants' children, and they produce results, especially in intarsia, which are admirable. The village orchestra, of which I spoke a moment ago, is trained and led by a peasant's son, who has never had a thorough ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... 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 ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... a red flannel cap, tricolor ribbons, and had something red upon his hands, which was neither ribbon nor flannel. He also looked hungry; but it was not for food. The other stopped when he saw him, and pulled something from his pocket. It was a watch, a repeater, in a gold filigree case of exquisite workmanship, with raised figures depicting the loves of an Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess; and, as it lay on the white hand of its owner, it bore an evanescent fragrance that seemed to recall scenes as beautiful and as completely ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... was it not in Macedonia at the gold mines of Pangaetus that another bloody uprising took place at vast cost to the gold industry because they rose as a man? Suppose you, that the silversmiths, gold-gilders, pearl and ivory and filigree workers should secretly band themselves together, hast thou knowledge to compute the loss to ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... blacksmith 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
... duty in the 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 ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 is ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... flying fish skimmed past us along the surface of the water, occasionally rising to a considerable height above it. Their beautiful wings, glittering in the bright sunlight, looked like delicate silver filigree-work. In the night one flew on board, only to be preserved in spirits by ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... 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 ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... about fifty feet in length and twenty or thirty feet out of the water. It was a glittering island, with savage peaks, deep valleys, bluffs, and promontories. The edges were delicately frilled and resembled silver filigree. Some of these, which were transparent and as daintily turned as old Venetian glass, dripped continually like rain-beaten eaves. The portion nearest the water's edge was honeycombed by the wavelets that dashed upon it without ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... similar brass dice-box and the boiling water poured on it. This boils up once, and is then poured into a delicate little china cup half the size of an after-dinner coffee-cup, and for a saucer you have what resembles a miniature bouquet-holder of silver or gilt filigree. If you take it in true Turkish style, you will drink your coffee without sugar, grounds and all; but a little sugar, minus the coffee-mud at the bottom, is much nicer. Coffee seems to be drunk everywhere and all the time by the Turks. The cafes are frequent, where they sit curled up on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Rev. Zachariah Sapp subject a piece of paper to such scrutiny. Both with the naked eye and with a microscope,— a relic of collegiate days,—he studied the engravings and filigree work. Detail by detail he compared the supposed imitation with bills of known genuineness without being able to discover the slightest point of variation between them. Paper, printing, and engraving seemed to be absolutely perfect. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dandridge. Not only were clothes and materials ordered, fine ivory combs, stockings, etc., but toys. Here is a selection made by the Cary firm—a child's fiddle, a coach and six in a box, a stable with six horses, a toy whip, a filigree watch, a neat enameled watch box, a corner cupboard and a ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... your legs. Have faith in yourself; pick these men's brains, and all men's. You can do it. Say to yourself boldly, as the false prophet in India said to the missionary, "I have fire enough in my stomach to burn up" a dozen stucco and filigree reformers and "assimilate their ashes into the bargain, like ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... of red stockings and Moorish slippers for her feet; she massed up her black hair into a tower upon her head, and roped it about with a chain of sequins which had served their last chaffer at Venice; she girt a belt of filigree gold and turquoise about her waist, gave her a finishing pat, and stood out to spy ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... threw a piece of money into the beautiful blue water, they would dive down and catch it before it reached the bottom. Some of the other boats were full of men, who came on board, bringing fans, canary-birds, parrots, feather flowers, basket-work, filigree jewelry, and many other things ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... beginning to enjoy herself, when he surprised her by turning from one of these unintelligible colloquies, and offering for her acceptance a beautifully wrought gold filigree bracelet. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... himself, though he spent half an hour with Nurse every morning over a reading-book. But he loved pictures, and he knew there were books with pictures in them. Once he had found a wonderful book here. It was bound in brown leather, and had filigree brass corners and clasps studded with blue turquoises. He had opened it and found pictures on every page, and the front page was illuminated in the most brilliant colours. His Aunt Anna had come into the room ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... a 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 and marble statuary. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... a Jap screen, and over the top of this some Arab scarfs were flung. There was a superabundance of clocks. China pugs guarded the hearth; a brass sunflower smiled from the top of either andiron, and a brass peacock spread its tail before them inside a high filigree fender; on one side was a coalhod in 'repousse' brass, and on the other a wrought iron wood-basket. Some red Japanese bird-kites were stuck about in the necks of spelter vases, a crimson Jap umbrella hung opened beneath ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... naves, like a basilica, which were separated by columns of sandalwood, whose capitals were of sculptured bonze. On each side of the apartment was a gallery for spectators, and a third, with a facade of gold filigree, was at one end, opposite an immense arch ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... over our low, lazy spread of bungalow; and late this very night, in the full moonlight, I leave my cot and walk down to the beach over a shadow carpet of Japanese filigree. The air over the white sand is as quiet and feelingless to my skin as complete, comfortable clothing. On one side is the dark river; on the other, the darker jungle full of gentle rustlings, low, velvety breaths ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... be placed in the eighth century of our era. The Ardagh Chalice belongs probably to about the same date. It was found in a rath at Ardagh, county Limerick, in 1868. It measures 7 inches in height and 9-1/2 in diameter. Around the cup is a band of fine filigree interlaced ornament in the form of panels divided by half beads of enamel. Below this are the names of the twelve Apostles in faint Celtic lettering. The two handles are beautifully decorated with panels of interwoven ornament, and on the sides are two ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... many flowers bowed gently under the weight of the flitful butterfly, or the industrious bee, or tossed to and fro lightly in the arms of the morning breeze. Overhead maples, resplendent in their fabric of soft and delicate green, arched themselves like fine-spun cobwebs, through which filigree the sun projected his rays at irregular and frequent intervals, lending only an occasional patch of sunlight here and there to the more exposed portions of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... health of the bride and bridegroom, which I most gladly did; and, let me say, so successfully as to bring back unwonted smiles to Campion's face, who now freely forgave me for the gaucheries at the marriage service. Then the guests strolled around, looking at the marriage presents—the usual filigree and useless things that are flung at the poor bride. Bittra took me into a little boudoir of her own to show me her ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... of these torches, they both could see very well. At first sight what my father saw was a great cave, like a large church or cathedral, here in the hill or mountain. Strangely broken was it in places, and great columns, like stalactites, were very numerous. There were others that looked like filigree work. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... several styles of paper and envelopes, and all stamped in gilt with a monogram composed of the initials E. C., and there was a tiny box of filigree ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... of Titihuti were tattooed from toes to ankles with a net-like pattern, and from the ankles to the waistline, where the design terminated in a handsome girdle, there were curves, circles and filigree, all in accord, all part of a harmonious whole, and most pleasing to the eye. The pattern upon her feet was much like that of sandals or high mocassins, indicating a former use of leg-coverings in a cold climate. Titihuti herself, after ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... student-like litter of books and papers, were seated half a dozen persons. Three were men and three were women. The table was heaped with a prodigality of luxuries. Luscious eastern fruits were piled up in silver filigree vases, through whose meshes their glowing rinds shone in the contrasts of a thousand hues. Small silver dishes that Benvenuto might have designed, filled with succulent and aromatic meats, were distributed upon a cloth of snowy damask. Bottles of every shape, slender ones from the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... seen, in mosaic, generals offering conquered cities to the Emperor on the palms of their hands. And on every side are columns of basalt, gratings of silver filigree, seats of ivory, and tapestries embroidered with pearls. The light falls from the vaulted roof, and Antony proceeds on his way. Tepid exhalations spread around; occasionally he hears the modest patter of a sandal. Posted in the ante-chambers, the custodians—who ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... gold). Associated words: alchemist, alchemy, auriferous, alloy, assay, assayer, assaying, filigree, aurated, auric, aureate, aurific, aurigraphy, aurivorous, aurocephalous, platinum, aurous, billet, carat, chlorination, chrysography, cupel, foil, cupellation, gild, orphrey, vermeil, gilded, gilding, gilt, orris, amalgamated, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... although now 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 a silk handkerchief, of which the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... said nothing, and took a mouthful of the tea, which, like the morality of the palace, was strong and bitter. But his ample chest expanded with just the slightest sigh of regret, causing the massive episcopal cross of gold filigree, set with a single sapphire, which rested thereon, to rise and fall gently. Miss Matilda's hawklike eye saw and noted this as the first slight sign of rebellion, and she hastened to mete out ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... independent, and heroic about the plan that 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,—damn ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... work in sculpture was a minute representation of the Crucifixion on a peach stone! The executioners, women, soldiers, and disciples were all represented in this infinitesimal space. She also inserted in a coat of arms a double-headed eagle in silver filigree; eleven peach stones on each side, one set representing eleven apostles with an article of the creed underneath, the other set eleven virgins with the name of a saint and her special attribute on each. Some of these intaglios are still in a private ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... frilled outside with the 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, and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... description of his house and its surroundings has an exquisite charm that almost makes one love the place as he did. "It is a little plaything house," he told Conway, "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 Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... 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 like ragged sails. They ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... beings, those ancient travelers. The Swedes, however, still cling to the belief that the bones of Wodin, the Alexander of the North, rest beneath the sod at Upsala. In these mounds have been found the bones of a woman and of a dog, a bracelet of filigree work, and a curious pin shaped like a bird, but no sign of Wodin's presence. Yet peasants believe that Wodin passes by on dark nights, and his horse's shoe, with eight nail-holes, is exhibited in the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... 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 look very ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... they were bound, had a juncture of antique wall, pierced with grilles of beaten iron; its gate, a delicacy of filigree, let them through to the ordered beauty of the lawns, over which the mansion presided, a pale, fine presence of a house. Hedges of yew, like walls of ebony, bounded the principal walks. The prisoner and the retinue of soldiers that dignified him went ahead; the two officers, acknowledging the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... him. Far down in the valley lay a still blue lake with a great white peak shining ethereally at its northern end. Dark pines rolled about it, growing smaller and smaller up the hillside until they dwindled with spires clean cut against the azure into a gossamer filigree. Between them and the water stupendous forest shrouded all the valley, save where an oblong of pale verdure ran back from the fringe of boulders and was traversed by the frothing streak of a river whose roar came up hoarsely across the pines ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... valued at thirty or forty reals of eight. They also wear breeches of the Malay fashion, which are closed like ours, although they are not so tight. It is the rule that they must be of silk with a gold fringe below, or with border and buttons of the same which among these people is always of filigree or of solid gold. In that they consider only ostentation, without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... sniffing at the moon and the sun, these filigree phrases and unintelligible fancies—There must, at least, be a point, a ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the little dark-haired sister. She would marry him; she would do it to save her father and sister. Then the filigree basket heaped with rubies and pearls and emeralds and sapphires! As for the other, what cared he if he rotted? It gave him the whip hand over the doddering council. Master he would be; he would blot out all things which stood in his path. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... 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, at whose death it descended ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... 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. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... my eyes, 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 or ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... withstood the brunt of battle with the Turks, and from them came the whispering voice—the 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 ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... receipts. It wasn't fair to give a taste of things that we ourselves could only have for very best, and send people home to wish for them. But she made some of her "griddles trimmed with lace," as only Barbara's griddles were trimmed; the brown lightness running out at the edges into crisp filigree. And another time it was the flaky spider-cake, turned just as it blushed golden-tawny over the coals; and then it was breakfast potato, beaten almost frothy with one white-of-egg, a pretty good bit of butter, a few ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... 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 ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... and then headed 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 ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... cried Annabel, reveling in the crystal, filigree, coral, and mosaic trinkets spread before her while Rose completed her rapture by adding sundry tasteful trifles ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... 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. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... only bought the vases, but pervaded the hall with one under each arm. The other gentlemen speculated with equal rashness in all sorts of frail trifles, and wandered helplessly about afterward, burdened with wax flowers, painted fans, filigree portfolios, and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... his whole existence, since, as a child, he had felt it graft itself upon the 'blue filigree ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... angles of costume where the dandyism of a cowboy of spirit and conceit may acquit itself; these are hatband, spurs, saddle, and leggins. I've seen hatbands made of braided gold and silver filigree; they were from Santa Fe, and always in the form of a rattlesnake, with rubies or emeralds or diamonds for eyes. Such gauds would cost from four hundred to two thousand dollars. Also, I've encountered ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... uncourteous a lesson as hate of the foreigner. As thou growest into womanhood, know that Norman knight is sworn slave to lady fair;" and, doffing his cap, he took from it an uncut jewel, set in Byzantine filigree work. "Hold out thy lap, my child; and when thou nearest the foreigner scoffed, set this bauble in thy locks, and think kindly of William, Count ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fluttering fan they hold in their ungloved hands. As everything is behind time 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 their breasts, they mutter ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... of the garden, as on a battle-field when they burn the dead, large bright fires 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 ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... limpid water moved through my mind, cleansing it, washing away the horror, soothing and comforting me. I was lying on my back looking up at an arabesque pattern of blue and saffron; gray-silver light filtered through a lacy, filigree. I was still weak but the blind terror ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed their diamond drops, and the twelve lions which support them cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. The court is laid out in flower-beds, and surrounded by light Arabian arcades of open filigree work, supported by slender pillars ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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
... picturesque and becoming, and some traces of the old style are yet to be seen throughout the pastoral districts; a close body, a jaunty little cap on the head, with a heavy tassel, ornamented with gold or silver bands, silver clasps to their belts, and filigree buttons down the front, give them a very pleasing appearance. Of late years, however, fashion has begun to assert her sway, even in this isolated part of the world, and the native costume is ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Sumatra has 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 ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... 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 ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... brilliant scarfs about her waist, and put on a truly gorgeous scarlet jacket with a golden sun embroidered on the back, a silver moon on the front, and stars of all sizes on the sleeves. A pair of Turkish slippers adorned her feet, and necklaces of amber, coral, and filigree hung about her neck, while one hand held a smelling-bottle, and the other the spicy box of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... head, the basis of which was black velvet. At the top was an aigrette of diamonds of the purest water, the centre one as large as a sixpenny-piece. Solitaires flashing blue flames blazed all over the cap, and the front was ornamented with a dragon in fine filigree work in red Malay gold set with diamonds. I fear to be thought guilty of exaggeration when I write that this child wore seven necklaces, all of gorgeous beauty. The stones were all cut in facets at the back; and highly polished, and their beauty was ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... owe this Prince great gratitude for the encouragement of so many skilled craftsmen, and for the preservation of Indian arts and crafts. There were four hundred fine-wood carvers, and four hundred fine-stone carvers, carving filigree ornaments, chains, and foliage of the most astonishing realism in these materials. Fancy, actual chains in granite, pendants from elephants' heads! Most of the skilled masons and joiners of India, I am told, have been collected ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch |
