"Lacquer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things which Grandfather had brought home from his travels all over the world. There were heavy, dark red tables carved with all kinds of flowers and animals, bright silk cushions, little ebony tabourets with brass trays upon them, curious vases and lacquer boxes from China and Japan. On the mantel was a beautiful tree of pink coral in a glass case, and beside it were wonderful shells and little elephants carved from ivory. On the walls were bits of embroidery ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."... With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp. Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine. With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... tolerable. The needed letters were written, various hints for my guidance were thrown out, and I drove back at half-past ten under heavens which were one blaze of stars amidst a dust of nebulae, like the inlaid gold spots amidst a dust of gold on old Japanese lacquer, and through a moist, warm atmosphere laden with the heavy fragrance of innumerable ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... my punishment to meet, You must forgive, I do entreat With clasped hands praying—oh, come back, Make peace, and you shall nothing lack. See now my pencils—paper—here, And pointless compasses, and dear Old lacquer-work; and stoneware clear Through glass protecting; all man's toys So coveted by girls and boys. Great China monsters—bodies much Like cucumbers—you all shall touch. I yield up all! my picture rare ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... can tell how hard it is to drain The evil spirit from the heart it preys in,— To bring sobriety to life again, Choked with the vile Anacreontic raisin,— To wash Black Betty when her black's ingrain,— To stick a moral lacquer on Moll Brazen, Of Suky Tawdry's habits to deprive her; To tame the wild-fowl-ways of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... superiority than otherwise. For who but a barbarian would defile the banquet hour "when the wine mantles in the cups" with a white table-cloth, the badge of grief and death? How much more elegant the soft red lacquer of the "eight fairy" table, with all its associations of the bridal hour! The host, too, at the head of his own board, sitting in what should be the seat of the most honoured guest, and putting the latter on his right instead of his left hand! Truly these red-haired barbarians ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... sent in my story, but unfortunately my friend forgot to put me next, for I got neither cash nor manuscript. The next time I passed the empty store, I stepped in to explain, but the artist had a black eye, and his own interest was so engrossed in Chinese lacquer-work and a stormy divorce case he had coming on shortly, that I was struck dumb. What was a short story in comparison with such issues? And I knew he had no more opinion of me as an author than I had of him ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... at the end of the eighteenth century; and a whim of her murdered husband had led him to replace the original, delicate, rather severe furniture by a most comfortable broad couch, two no less comfortable chairs with arms, a small red lacquer table and a dozen cushions. He had hung on each wall a drawing of dancing-girls by Degas. Since the coverings of the couch and the cushions were of Chinese silken embroideries, the interior appeared a somewhat bizarre mixture of ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... were placed many objects from the Royal, Museum, notably a large collection of ancient weapons, drums, cymbals, temple gongs, howdahs, some wonderful examples of mother-of-pearl work, hammered silver of antique designs, old lacquer, enormous elephant tusks, ancient theatrical costumes and properties, and portraits of Their Majesties the King and the Queen and His Royal Highness ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... stones as in after times, supported the walls and roof, the latter being of thatch. The rafters, crossed at the top, were tied along the ridge-pole with the fibres of creepers or wistaria vines. No paint, lacquer, gilding, or ornaments of any sort existed in the ancient shrine, and even to-day the modern Shint[o] temple must be of pure hinoki or sun-wood, and thatched, while the use of metal is as far as possible ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Muller, making another careful examination of the floor, found something else. It was something that might be utterly unimportant or might be of great value. It was a tiny bit of hardened lacquer which he found on the floor beside one of the legs of the desk. It was rounded out, with sharp edges, and coloured grey with a tiny zigzag of yellow on its surface. Muller lifted it carefully and looked at it keenly. This tiny bit of lacquer had evidently been knocked off from ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... Tables were crowded with porcelain, cloisonne and statues of gods. Lanterns hung from the roof; and in a corner of the room stood an enormous bowl-shaped bell as big as a bath, resting on a tripod of red lacquer. When struck with a thick leather baton like a drum-stick it uttered a deep sob, a wonderful, round, perfect sound, full of the melancholy of the wind and the pine-forests, of the austere dignity of a vanishing civilisation, and the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... bokharchas commonly seen in the streets of old towns. The best carvers are at Bhera, Chiniot, Amritsar, and Batala. The European demand has produced at Simla and other places an abundant supply of cheap articles of little merit. The inlaid work of Chiniot and Hoshyarpur is good, as is the lacquer-work of Pakpattan. The papier mache work of Kashmir has much artistic merit (Fig. 55), and some of the repousse silver work ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... handsome, with superb Japanese and Chinese hangings, wrought about the middle of the last century to fit the spaces they occupy; on all sides are the most perfect specimens of Japanese and Chinese bronzes, ivory carvings, lacquer-work, and the like: these rooms are given up to the committees into which the whole body is divided. Up-stairs is a dining-hall in which the Dutch Government serves, every working-day, a most bounteous lunch ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... find an answer to the question in the varnish with which the silken fabric is impregnated? I hesitate to say yes and I hesitate to say no, for a host of cocoons are coated with a similar lacquer though deprived of communication with the outside air. All said, without being able at present to account for its necessity, I admit that the apex of the Anthidia is a breathing-aperture. I bequeath to the future the task of telling us for what reasons the collectors of both cotton and resin ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... midst looking like an opera-glass on a green table. Further still to the right, as one turns the corner of the terrace, lies Paris, a white line on the horizon, broken by the mass of the Arc de Triomphe, the roof of the Opéra, and the Eiffel Tower, resplendent in a fresh coat of yellow lacquer! ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the proud Jennie, thrust themselves out of the windows. A driver with a fine carriage is indeed standing near the Treppel entrance. His brand-new, dashing victoria glistens with new lacquer; at the ends of the shafts two tiny electric lights burn with a yellow light; the tall white horse, with a bare pink spot on the septum of its nose, shakes its handsome head, shifts its feet on the same spot, and pricks up its thin ears; the bearded, stout driver ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... must, you must. You can't refuse! It has been my dream all this time to drink tea with you here just once—just once. To serve you on this little table and hand you the basket with cakes! Do you see this little lacquer table, with the lovely birds of inlaid mother-of-pearl? I had that given to me last Christmas for the especial purpose of serving you tea on it. For I said to myself: 'He is accustomed to the highest elegance.' And you are here and are going to refuse? No, no, that's impossible. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... from Japan, plains of corn, plains of rice, plains of scorched grass; snow-peaks under the stars, volcanoes, green and black; huge rivers, tumbling streams, waterfalls, lakes, the ocean; hovels and huts of wood or sun-dried bricks, thatched or tiled; marble palaces and baths; red lacquer, golden tiles; saints, kings, conquerors, and, enduring or worshipping these, a myriad generations of peasants through long millenniums, toiling, suffering, believing, in one unchanging course of life, before the dawn of history on and down ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the Chinese Room; the sun streams through the windows, illuminating the wondrous golden dragons standing out in bold relief from the burnished lacquer work, decorating still further with light and shade the delicate silk embroideries thin taper hands have woven with infinite pains. The walls are hung with rice paper, depicting the conventional scenes of ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... shopkeeper's clock, smothered with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be manuscript articles torn across the top by the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... studied him dubiously, and clapped his hands, the great diamond cutting an oval of many colors. Coolies were given up by the night, and ran to obey his guttural, musical commands. They returned with steaming bowls of rice and meat, and a narrow lacquer table. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... who disposes of a trivial interruption, and bent again to the matter before him. Between his large, white hands, each decorated with a single ring, he held a small oblong box, the size of a cigar-case, of that blue lacquer of which Russian craftsmen once alone possessed the secret. Battered now by base uses, tarnished and abraded here and there, it preserved yet, for such eyes as those of Mr. Baruch, clues to its ancient delicacy of surface and the glory of its sky-rivaling blue. He had found ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to leave the reviews unread. No one else living had understood Pleydon; and when descriptions of his life spoke of the austerity in his later years, his fanatical aversion to women, Linda thought of the brittle glove in the gilt-lacquer box. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... frowns and is heavy; pearl grey loses its blue and changes to a muddy white; brown is lifeless and cold; as for deep green, such as emperor or myrtle, it has the same properties as blue and merges into black. There remained, then, the paler greens, such as peacock, cinnabar or lacquer, but the light banishes their blues and brings out their yellows in tones that have a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... in its adornment. The screens were objects of beauty, and separated the large rooms with their fine pillars and ceilings of grained and polished woods. The rama-sho[u]ji were carved by Nature's handiwork, and the polished lacquer and brass reflected a thousand times the beauties roundabout. Whether the garden be viewed from the apartments, or both from the tsukiyama or artificial hill beside the little lake, it was a scene of balanced beauty, showing every nicety of man's hand in Nature's own proportion, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... fire, a superb nautilus shell, like a little pearl vessel. The corner what-not, too, had its shelves heaped with shells and coral and choice bits of rainbow lava from volcanic islands. Between the windows, instead of the conventional mahogany cardtable, stood one of Indian lacquer, and on it was a little inlaid cabinet that was brought from over seas. The whole room in this little inland cottage, far beyond the salt fragrance of the sea, seemed like one of those marine fossils sometimes found miles from the coast. It indicated the presence of the sea in the lives of ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... vehicles they mount the sky: When Jove would some fair nymph inveigle, He comes full gallop on his eagle; Though Venus be as light as air, She must have doves to draw her chair; Apollo stirs not out of door, Without his lacquer'd coach and four; And jealous Juno, ever snarling, Is drawn by peacocks in her berlin: But we can fly where'er we please, O'er cities, rivers, hills, and seas: From east to west the world we roam, And in all climates ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... do," said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of Chinn by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are allowed to look ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Palace called the Seir-y[o]den; and upon these mattings were placed four tables of offerings to the Star-deities. Besides the customary food-offerings, there were placed upon these tables rice-wine, incense, vases of red lacquer containing flowers, a harp and flute, and a needle with five eyes, threaded with threads of five different colors. Black-lacquered oil-lamps were placed beside the tables, to illuminate the feast. In another part of the grounds a tub of water was so placed ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... o'clock. She idly walked Anneli through the various rooms, pointing out to her this and that; and as the little Dresden maid had not been in the Museum before, her eyes were wide open at the sight of such beautiful things. She was shown masses of rich tapestry and cases of Japanese lacquer-work; she was shown collections of ancient jewellery and glass; she went by sunny English landscapes, and was told the story of solemn cartoons. In the midst of it all George Brand appeared; and the little German girl, of her own accord, and ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... measures, a peremptory order to a native chief and two dozen other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great Indian Government, stripped of its casings, and lacquer, and paint, and guard-rails, impresses even the most stupid man. And Mrs. Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was a little afraid at first, and felt as if she had laid hold of a lightning-flash by the tail, and did not quite know what to do with it. There were remarks and initials ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... time. The room was steeped in rosy light—such a pretty room, with chintz curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt Betsy's favourite Persian cat, a marvel of fluffy whiteness, rose from the hearth to welcome them. It was ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye. He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a thorn-tree, projected on either side ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... is better than that." Better throw himself in the river, even, than go back. He could see the olive-drab clothes in a heap among the dry bullrushes on the river bank.... He thought of himself crashing naked through the film of ice into water black as Chinese lacquer. And when he climbed out numb and panting on the other side, wouldn't he be able to take up life again as if he had just been born? How strong he would be if he could begin life a second time! How madly, how joyously he would live now that there was no more war.... He had ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... produced on trays of red lacquer, fish and vegetables of different kinds artistically arranged, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... grows mainly in the island of Hondo. The sap, after preparation, forms the most durable varnish known. Black lacquer is obtained by treating the sap with nutgalls. Lacquered wooden-ware is sold all over Europe and the United States. The lacquered surface is exceedingly hard and water-proof; it is not ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... in the park. He knelt by it and ran a reverent hand over its painted surface. In many colours were birds and beasts, and men in profile, and queer marks that he knew to be picture-writing; processions of slaves and oxen, reapers and water-bearers. The tints were fresh under their overlaying lacquer. There was even a smell of varnish. He wondered if the contents—if It—were in the same remarkable state of preservation. He rapped on the thin wood—it was cedar, he thought, or perhaps sycamore. The sound was musical, resonant; ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... that there are no strains upon a mortise lock, it is quite as good as if it was of wrought iron. There is no unnecessary grinding, but the iron is japanned, and the japan is as much superior to the English compound as is the lacquer ware of the Japanese to that which is executed in Birmingham and palmed upon the ignorant buyer as Japanese work. In fact, as you can see for yourselves, the English japan looks almost like gas tar beside the American. This American lock is a ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... borne along merely by his own outspread arms. And everywhere he looked, on every hill and in every hollow, he saw the horns of innumerable talking-machines growing out of the ground. Thousands upon thousands of those familiar cornucopias of bright lacquer with gilt edges pointed their open mouths up at him. And each one was the center of a swarming ant-hill of busy gunners ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... brushing by, and making for the passage beyond. This brought him past the still-room, the steward's room, the housekeeper's room, and the butler's pantry. All were in most glorious confusion; in the latter, Captain Cutitfat's lacquer-toed, lavender-coloured dress-boots were reposing in the silver soup tureen, and Captain Bouncey's varnished pumps were stuffed into a wine-cooler. The last detachment of empty bottles stood or lay about the floor, commingling with boot-jacks, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the returns are abundant. The principal food crop is RICE. Other food crops are wheat, barley, and the soya bean, but these not numerously so. The principal cultivated products for purposes of commerce are the mulberry tree (for supporting the silkworm), the tea plant, the lacquer tree, and the camphor tree. Rice also is grown for export as well as for home consumption, and COTTON is very largely grown for home manufacture. No milk, butter, or cheese is produced, scarcely any meat, no wood, ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... within it is a fairy palace, hung with silk draperies, tapestries, and hand-painted curtains; the floors are covered with magnificent rugs from Persia and India, and the reception-room is crowded with treasures of ebony, ivory, lacquer work, and gold and silver. There were two thrones made of silver dragons, with many scales, and studded with jewels. The Sultan did not seem to mind our openly admiring his treasures, and his attendants, who stood about ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... heels, Caroline's flowered Chinese silk. The room was large and square, with a Turkey floor carpet, and walls hung with paper printed in lavender and black perspectives from copper plates. A great many candles had been lighted, on tables and mantel, and in lacquer stands. One of the latter, at Mrs. Winscombe's ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... tombs. We see especially ladies and gentlemen of society, with richly ornamented, elegant, expensive clothing that is very reminiscent of the clothing customary to this day in Japan. There are also artistic representations of human figures on lacquer caskets. While sculpture was not strongly developed, the architecture of the Han must have been magnificent and technically highly complex. Sculpture and temple architecture received a great stimulus with the spread of Buddhism in China. According to our present knowledge, Buddhism entered China ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... the decoration of my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house at Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer's ball-room—oh, Fulmer, where are the cartoons?" She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. "I'd got as far as Brindisi. I've travelled day and night to be here to meet him," she declared. "But, you darling," and she held out a caressing hand to Susy, "I'm forgetting to ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... merely permitted him to drive pheasants for them, and why Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to die unwed, and—and—and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer muzzle toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more—having travelled half the world over to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... bedstead and mosquito net. Behind was a bathroom having a corrugated cistern upon the cross beams which gave force for a shower. The towels and appointments were specklessly clean. When Birnier appeared he found zu Pfeiffer sprawled in the lounge. On a red lacquer tray upon a great war drum, covered with the striped skin of a zebra, was a crystal liqueur set and a large silver box ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... was strangely and magnificently luxurious. Old tapestry, old weapons, a heap of old furniture, Chinese and Japanese curios were displayed even in the very hall. On the left there was a dining-room, panelled with lacquer work and having its ceiling draped with a design of a red dragon. Then there was a staircase of carved wood above which banners drooped, whilst tropical plants rose up like plumes. Overhead, the studio was a marvel, though rather small and without a picture visible. The ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... other side of the passage, toward the garden, was the dining-room, decorated in imitation of black lacquer with green and gold flowers; this was separated from the kitchen by the well of the staircase. Communication with the kitchen was had through a little pantry built behind the staircase, the kitchen itself ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the drawing-room of Lady Waverton. It was congested and dim. The two oriel windows were so draped with curtains of pink and yellow that only a faint light as of the last of a sunset filtered through. The wide spaces were beset with screens in lacquer, odd chairs, Dutch tables, and very many cabinets,—cabinets inlaid with flowers and birds of many colours; cabinets full of shells, agates, corals, and any gaudy stone; cabinets and yet again more cabinets full of Eastern china. In the midst Lady ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... 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. ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... for the benefit of women are two drawing-room pages. These are small, well-trained little boys in buttons, livery or done up in stippers, white linen and turbans, who at intervals of fifteen minutes carry about among the callers large lacquer trays, on which are spread violets and rose leaves, crystallized and salted nuts with ginger. One is supposed to scoop up a few of the confections or ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the whole view of this temple of Wrath or Justice, was suggestive of a frightful Inferno, with its rows of demon gods, hideous beyond Western conception, engaged in torturing writhing and bleeding specimens of humanity. Demon masks of ancient lacquer hung from the pillars, naked swords gleamed in motionless hands, and in a deep recess whose 'darkness' was rendered 'visible' by one lamp, was that indescribable horror the executioner of the Lord of Hell, his many brandished arms ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... a game they used to play I' the San-ju-san-jen Do, They filled a little lacquer tray With powders in a row, Dry dust of flowers from Tashiro To Mount Daimugenzan, Dry little heaps of dust, but O They ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... but on every creature, in regard to these particulars? Well; if such a day never come again, then I perceive much else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of insight will never come; heroic purity of heart and of eye; noble pious valor, to amend us and the age of bronze and lacquer, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacquer age, of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies and mendacities, will have to run its course, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... business, I was told, in patent medicine, which is hawked over Japan generally and cures everything. But the former splendor of the place has left it forever. The rooms in the inn, where neighboring daimyos were wont to rest on their journeys through, are still superb with carving, lacquer and paintings, but no daimyo will ever again hold his traveling court before their tokonoma. The man perchance may again tarry there, but the manner of it all has gone to join the past. Now he who wills may ensconce himself in the daimyo's corner, and fancy himself ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... at the farther end of the chamber an altar elevated upon a platform approached by wooden steps; but there is no image, only the usual altar furniture of gilded bronze and lacquer-ware. Behind the altar I see only a curtain about six feet square—a curtain once dark red, now almost without any definite hue—probably veiling some alcove. A temple guardian approaches, and invites us to ascend the platform. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... on a small lacquer table near his chair, and his fox-terrier watched him with imploring eyes, occasionally voicing his feelings in a stifled bark. The boy came in answer to his call, carrying the lamp in his hands, and put it down near Hartley, who turned up the wick, and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... beautiful things in nature—shining with incomparable crystalline whiteness. So delicate is it, however, for so great is the surface it exposes, that it is generally rapidly deteriorated by exposure to the air. It may be protected to some extent by lacquering with pale lacquer, but it loses some of its brilliancy and purity in the process. The deposit is generally scratch-brushed or burnished down ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... young ladies, the bridesmaids, go out to meet the bride and lead her to her dressing-room. Here she finds her own property, which has been brought to her future home during the day. Toilet-stands and cabinets and the ceremonial towel-rack are prominently displayed. On a tall clothes-horse of gilt lacquer are hung her silk robes and the other articles of her wardrobe, which are bridal gifts. Over the doorway, in a gilt rack, glitters the long spear or halberd to the dexterous use of which all Japanese ladies of good family are trained. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... design as well as the Chinese; and not only did they make similar sorts of porcelain, but they subsequently invented styles of decoration of their own. They did much medallion-painting, a form of design unknown in China. They also gave to the world their wonderful Japanese lacquer, a varnish of gums that could be applied not only to wood but in some cases to porcelain. They also were the race to invent Cloisonne ware, a very difficult type of thing when made as they made it. To the surface ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... the house settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve minutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed some artistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies and lacquer boxes. The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to be without its interest; in its way it provided the one really important and dramatic moment of the evening. One or two uniforms and evening toilettes had already made their appearance in the Imperial box; ...
— When William Came • Saki
... [in Cantonese, An-t'o-man]. This is a group of two islands in the middle of the sea, one of them being large, the other small; the latter is quite uninhabited. The large one measures seventy li in circuit. The natives on it are of a colour resembling black lacquer; they eat men alive, so that sailors dare not anchor on ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... out under the apple-red sky, through the streets where the shadows of the houses lay black as lacquer. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... and there they could not admire enough the profusion and magnificence of the tapestries, beds, sofas, cabinets, tables, and stands. There were mirrors in which they could view themselves from top to toe, some with frames of plate glass, others with frames of silver and gilt lacquer, that were the most superb and beautiful things that had ever been seen. They were loud and persistent in their envy of their friend's good fortune. She, on the other hand, derived little amusement from the sight of all ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... emerges from the pantry with a tray of Chinese lacquer and a very fine tea-set on it. He rests it provisionally on the end of the table; snatches away the drawing-board, which he stands on the floor against table legs; and puts the tray in the space thus cleared. Ellie ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... a mould. Sometimes to make it stronger for large mouldings, bits of canvas or even wire are also used. The best papier mache is made of pure wood cellulose. The beautiful boxes and trays covered with lacquer which the Japanese and Chinese make are formed of this; but it has many much humbler uses than these. Paper screws are employed in ornamental wood work, and if a hole is begun for such a screw, it will twist its way into soft wood as well as steel ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?" ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... use, by the well-tended fire in its shining grate, she had created an agreeable corner where she sat in a chair marvellous for ease and comfort, enclosed from draughts by a fire screen of antique Chinese lacquer, a table by her side and all she required within her reach. Upon the table stood a silver bell and, at its sound, her companion, her reader, her maid or her personally trained footman, came and went quietly and promptly as if summoned ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ornaments of jade and lacquer, And the bamboo pipe and the hap-heem that I have laid aside, And the written leaves containing my verses. But there are no writing tables, no ink and no brushes. For now my verses will be ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... in light oil. This insures preservation and restores their natural luster. Every three months or so, rub them with oil again—their most delicate colors will remain brilliant for years. Don't ever use shellac, lacquer or varnish. Get a reference book from your library and identify your shells. Keep an account of when and where you ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... thanks for the book about the boulders. Those are fellows indeed! They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk. It's really a pleasure now and then to become a mere nothing, especially when a man is as highly placed as I am. And then to think that we all, even with patent lacquer, are nothing more than insects of a moment on that ant-hill the earth, though we may be insects with stars and garters, places and offices! One feels quite a novice beside these venerable million-year-old boulders. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... waste products; here the Capricorns collect the chalky paste which becomes the stone lid for the entrance to the cell; here caterpillars keep in reserve the gums and powders with which they strengthen the cocoon; hence the Hymenoptera draw the lacquer which they employ to upholster their silken edifice. And now we find the Lily-beetle using it as a store for frothy cement.[1] What an obliging organ is this ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... some nine years back. Its furniture, for the most part, was of the Restoration, of simple and massive oak blackened by age, which I ever fancied better than the Frenchy baubles of tables and chairs with spindle legs, and cabinets of glass and gold lacquer which were then making their way into the fine mansions of our town. The house was full of twists and turns, and steps up and down, and nooks and passages and queer hiding-places which we children knew, and in parts queer leaded ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you like the taste of my old home," Eliza answered. "My new house up the river is furnished throughout in real oriental red lacquer. You must ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... native quarter. It is a real adventure to make an expedition there, and the owners allow us to poke in back rooms from which we unearth wondrous treasures in the way of old brass vases; queer, slender-necked scent-bottles still faintly smelling of roses; old lacquer boxes, and bits of rich embroidery. I am becoming a Shylock in the way I beat down prices. I shouldn't wonder a bit when I go home and am ruffling it once more in Bond Street if, when told the price of a thing is a guinea, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... deformed? The heart is the important thing. If the heart be awry, what though your skin be fair, your nose aquiline, your hair beautiful? All these strike the eye alone, and are utterly useless. It is as if you were to put horse-dung into a gold-lacquer luncheon-box. This is what is called a fair outside, deceptive ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... curves and low furniture with curved backs. It was all Eastern, as was the first floor of the house. Maria understood with a sort of intuition that this was necessary. The walls were covered with Eastern hangings, tables of lacquer stood about filled with squat bronzes and gemlike ivory carvings. The hangings were all embroidered in short curve effects. Maria realized that her hostess, in this room, made more of a harmony than she ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... numbers. When we first made acquaintance with the shops we thought they seemed full of beautiful things, but even one day's shopping, in the company of experienced people, has educated our taste and taught us a great deal; though we have still much to learn. There are very respectable-looking lacquer cabinets ranging in price from 5s. to 20l. But they are only made for the foreign market. No such things exist in a Japanese home. A really good bit of old lacquer (the best is generally made into the form of a small box, a portable ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Desvarennes discovered them in a garret in 1864, neglected by the grandchildren of the buyer, who were ignorant of the immense value of such unrivalled work. Cleverly mended, they are to-day the pride of the great trader's drawing-room. On the mantelpiece there is a large clock in Chinese lacquer, ornamented with gilt bronze, made on a model sent out from Paris in the reign of Louis Quatorze, and representing the Flight of ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... And the Red One himself Bassett knew it to be on the instant. A perfect sphere, full two hundred feet in diameter, the top of it was a hundred feet below the level of the rim. He likened the colour quality of it to lacquer. Indeed, he took it to be some sort of lacquer, applied by man, but a lacquer too marvellously clever to have been manufactured by the bush-folk. Brighter than bright cherry-red, its richness of colour was as if it were red builded ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... bazaar winked at Sara as he brought out the buttons for Avrillia's inspection. They looked very much like ordinary buttons, except that they were, of course, more intelligent-looking, and they were on a pink card instead of a white one; also, they were in a shiny lacquer box, the lid of which was watched ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... a quick glance around the scene, at the Spaniards in their blue linen uniforms, the red and lacquer of the guarda civile, the ordered Mausers, the trumpeters resting their trumpets on their hips, at our own array, McKibben in his black shirt, Ludlow in his white leggings, and the rank and file of the escort, the bronzed, blue-trousered troopers, erect ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... that known as Ceylon gamboge. The juice is collected by incising the stems, or by breaking young twigs of the tree and securing the yellow gum resinous exudations in hollow bamboos, where it is allowed to harden. It is employed by artists in water colors and as a varnish for lacquer work. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... kind of anteroom, a cube of perhaps twenty feet each way, without windows, and with no doors except that by which we entered and another to the right. Walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with a black lacquer, brilliantly polished, that flashed the light of our lanterns in a thousand intricate reflections. It was like the inside of an enormous Japanese box, and about as empty. From this we passed to another room, and here we nearly dropped our lanterns. The room was circular, thirty ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... encircled his lofty collar, pearly-grey silk socks spanned the divorcing gap 'twixt beautiful grey kid shoes and correctest trousers, a pearly-grey silk handkerchief peeped knowingly from the cuff of his pearly-grey silk shirt by his pearly-grey kid glove, and his little cane was of grey lacquer, and of pearl handle. One could almost have sworn that a pearl-grey smile adorned the scarce-shut mouth of the beautiful modern product of education and civilization, to carry on the so well-devised colour-scheme to the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... preparation are convenient in many ways. For instance, porous wood may be soaked in the soft resin and then by heat and pressure it is changed to the bakelite form and the wood comes out with a hard finish that may be given the brilliant polish of Japanese lacquer. Paper, cardboard, cloth, wood pulp, sawdust, asbestos and the like may be impregnated with the resin, producing tough and hard material suitable for various purposes. Brass work painted with it and then baked ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... traversing what is popularly known as "curio" street. At this point we request our human horses to trot, instead of going at the mad speed usual to them, in order that we make notes of Japanese life by the way. We pass many shops devoted to the sale of lacquer ware, for which the Japanese are so justly famed, catch glimpses of unequalled egg shell, and Satsuma china, made of a clay, formed only in this neighbourhood, and which, thanks to the European mania for collecting, fetch the most fancy ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... a strong lye of wood-ashes, which you may strengthen with soap-lees; put in your brass work, and the lacquer will immediately come off; then have ready a pickle of aquafortis and water, strong enough to take off the dirt; wash it immediately in clean water, dry it ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... occasion restrain me from denouncing them and their author as I feel at liberty to do in the walks of private life. Mr. President, according to that Christian code which I have been taught, there is no atonement in the thin lacquer of public courtesy, or of private ceremonial observance, for the offence one man does another when he violates that provision of the Decalogue, which, speaking to him, says, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' and which means ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... there about the room. A dictaphone in a case was in a corner, but beside it was a little table on which were set out some rare bits of old Chelsea. There was also a gramophone, but it was enclosed in a superb case of genuine old black-and-gold lacquer. The very books in their shelves carried on this contrast of business with recreation. For while one set of shelves contained row upon row of technical works, company reports, and all manner of business reference books bound in leather, on another were ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... recalled her to the disagreeable present. In the sombre light she stumbled against a screen covered with paper painted to look like lacquer-work, and, as the slip-shod old nurse in her serre-tete motioned her forward, she had a dismal sense of a lodging-house interior, a bourgeois barrenness enhanced by two engravings after Leopold Robert, depressingly alien from that dainty boudoir ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... out the lamp which stood upon the lacquer-enameled table. The shoji alone was dimly plain by the star light. The moon has not come up yet. I and Porcupine put our faces close to the shoji, watching almost breathless. A wall clock somewhere ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... They drew forth fine shavings and unwrapped layers of paper, neatly secured; slowly the core of the mystery disclosed itself in a temple-like form with a roof of dull black lacquer and dimly gilded inner walls, a thickly swathed figure wedged between them. The gift was, they now perceived, a Chinese Bouddha in his shrine, and, as Gregory and Barker disengaged the figure and laid it upon the ground, amusement, though still of an acrid sort, overcame Gregory's ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them a different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to a monotonous convention to merit the serious ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... language of the graphic arts. Any human being, in fact, who has developed a sensitiveness to artistic beauty will receive a measure of delight from the work of Japanese masters. A few strokes of the brush upon silk, a bit of lacquer work, the decoration of a sword-hilt, are enough to set his eye dancing. But the expert collector soon passes beyond this general enthusiasm into a quite particular interest in the handicraft of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... war, across injustice, and went out still in love and reverence. We never dreamed that our ideal England was dead and buried, that the actual England was not the marble goddess of our idolatry, but a poor Brummagem image, coarse lacquer-ware and tawdry paint! We never dreamed that the queenly mother of heroes was nursing 'shopkeepers' now, with only shopkeepers' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... about the room. He looked at the delicate adornment of the walls, the curtains of Lyons damask, the crystal girandoles, the toys in porcelain of Saxony and Sevres, in bronze and ivory and Chinese lacquer, crowding the tables and cabinets of inlaid wood. Overhead floated a rosy allegory by Luca Giordano; underfoot lay a carpet of the royal manufactory of France; and through the open windows he heard the plash of the garden fountains and saw the alignment ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery running right round it from which the few small bedrooms opened by low black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... and cut the skies. On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes. But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest; I stood upon the sand; With lifted hand I looked upon them And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes, And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again. Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray, Embalmed in amber every pirate lies, Embalmed in amber ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... commonly executed in richly marked walnut, frequently enriched with excellent marquetry of woods. Mahogany was the dominating timber in English furniture from the accession of George II. almost to the time of the Napoleonic wars; but many cabinets were made in lacquer or in the bright-hued foreign woods which did so much to give lightness and grace to the British style. The glass-fronted cabinet for China or glass was in high favour in the Georgian period, and for pieces of that type, for which massiveness would have been inappropriate, satin ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... could not help being impressed by the wealth of articles in beautiful cloisonne enamel, in mother-of-pearl, lacquer, and champleve. There were beautiful little koros, or incense burners, vases, and teapots. There were enamels incrusted, translucent, and painted, works of the famous Namikawa, of Kyoto, and Namikawa, of Tokyo. Satsuma vases, splendid and rare examples of the potter's ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... acknowledging the 'hanna-moko,' or 'bridegroom' (who sits opposite to her in an official dress), by partaking of the nuptial saki. This 'saki,' or 'wine,' is prepared by two intimate female friends of the bride, who first pour it into the gold and silver lacquer vessels on the stand, which respectively represent the husband and wife, and then, taking the vessels in hand, mix the contents in a cup, and deliver it to the 'shewarin,' or 'master of the ceremonies,' who hands it to the bride, ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... a small bedroom evidently very recently furnished in new and white shining lacquer of French design, elaborately inlaid with painted porcelains and draped with a profusion of rosy taffeta. Among this elegance, surprisingly unrelated to the ancient paneled walls, stood the hastily opened trunk and bags of the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat; Or when from court a birthday suit bestow'd, Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load. Booth enters—hark! the universal peal! 'But has he spoken?' Not a syllable. What shook the stage, and made the people stare? Cato's long wig, flower'd gown, and lacquer'd chair. ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... work. In case 99, Museum No. 1 at Kew, there is a selection of small useful and ornamental articles made in Japan of Keyaki wood. Those manufactured from ornamental Keyaki (which is simply gnarled stems or roots, or pieces cut tangentially), and coated with the transparent lacquer for which the Japanese an so famous, are particularly handsome. In the museum library is also a book, the Japanese title of which is given below—"Handbook of Useful Woods," by E. Kinch. Professor at the Imperial College of Agriculture, at Tokio, Japan. This work contains ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... while Villalobar, Gibson and de Leval were in the salon at the Ministry, the room of which I have spoken so often as the yellow salon, because of the satin upholstery of its Louis XVI. furniture of white lacquer—that bright, almost laughing little salon, all done in the gayest, lightest tones, where so many little dramas were played. All three of them were deeply moved and very anxious—the eternal contrast, as de Leval said, between things and sentiments. Lancken ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... dragons crawled and fought or strove to swallow dead black planets, while on every hand black imps of Eblis writhed and struggled over golden screens, golden devils mocked and mowed from panels of cinnabar, and horrific masks of crimson lacquer, picked out with gold and black, leered and snarled dumb menaces ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... bush. It was one of those days of the American autumn when the air is shot with gold, when there is gold in the light, gold on the foliage, gold on the grass, gold on all surfaces, gold in all shadows, and a gold sheen in the sky itself. Red gold like a rich lacquer overlay the trunks of the occasional pines, and pale-yellow gold, beaten and thin, shimmered along the pendulous garlands of the American elms, where they caught the sun. It was a windless morning and a silent one; the sound of a hammer or of a motorist's ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King |
