"Ornamentation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the chief. Examining the chief's pockets. Finding a photograph of George and Harry. Hunting the pockets of the slain warriors. The match box. John's startled look. The monogram. Human hair. Its part in ornamentation. Scalps. Customs connected with human hair. Going forward. Surrounded by the warriors. The running fight. The yaks beyond control. The flight. The savages trying to outflank them. Warriors on all sides. The river in sight. A tributary to the West River. Getting the yaks under control. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... afterwards visited by Hiuen Tsang; who describes it as having three storeys, six halls, three towers, and accommodation for a thousand monks. "On it," says Hiuen Tsang, "the utmost skill of the artist has been employed; the ornamentation is in the richest colors, and the statue of Buddha is cast in gold and silver, decorated with ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the centre of the yard or court at Tattersall's, a significant representation of an old fox, and I often wondered whether it was set up as a warning, or merely by way of ornamentation, or as the symbol of sport. It might have been to tell you to be wary and on the alert. But whatever the original design of this statue to Reynard, the old fox read me a solemn lesson, and seemed to be always ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... we visited the house of Giulio Romano, which stands in one of the fine, lonesome streets, and at the outside of which we looked. The artist designed it himself; and it is very pretty, with delicacy of feeling in the fine stucco ornamentation, but is ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... "woman," we may well have considerable doubt as to whether woman really DESIRES enlightenment about herself—and CAN desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ORNAMENT for herself—I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine?—why, then, she wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want truth—what does woman care for truth? From the very first, nothing is more foreign, more repugnant, or ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... mid-day this man came, and after a good look at me where I lay he stuck his spear in the earth, squatted down, took out his flint and waddy, and began once more to laboriously cut the zigzag lines that formed the ornamentation. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... home Bill succeeded in purchasing, after much talk, a pair of moccasins that Hazel conceded to be a work of art, what with the dainty pattern of beads and the ornamentation of colored porcupine quills. Her feminine soul could not cavil when Bill thrust them in the pocket of her coat, even if her mind was set against accepting any peace tokens at ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... low, dark, and narrow. The inner courts gloomy, damp, and prison-like. Brass ornaments, sockets, rings, and torch-holders of iron, sculptured emblems, crests, and cognizances in colored marble, are let into the outer walls. In all else, ornamentation is made subservient to defense. These are city fortresses rather than ancestral palaces. They were constructed to ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... friends, and might at a glance admire together Giotto, Simone Martini, and Lorenzetto. We should say he admired Simone and Lorenzetto more than Giotto, for the grace of their figures, refinement of execution, and greater richness of the accessories, robes and ornamentation, together with the pleasing brilliance of colouring, all approached more nearly to Fra Giovanni's own artistic sentiment ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... hair they wore [6]and manes on the back of their heads,[6] [7]fair, comely indeed.[7] Dark-blue cloaks they all had about them. Next to their skin, gleaming-white tunics, [LL.fo.55b.] [8]with red ornamentation, reaching down to their calves.[8] Swords they had with round hilts of gold and silvern fist-guards, [9]and shining shields upon them and five-pronged spears in their hands.[9] "Is yonder man Cormac?" all the people asked. "Nay, verily, that is not ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... doubted. She certainly procured many Chinese mirrors, which are easily distinguished by finely executed and beautiful decorative designs in low relief on their backs; whereas her own mirrors—occasionally of iron—did not show equal skill of technique or ornamentation. Comparative roughness distinguished them, and they had often a garniture of jingle-bells (suzu) cast around the rim, a feature not found in Chinese mirrors. They were, in fact, an inferior copy of a Chinese prototype, the kinship of the two being further attested ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate ornamentation lavished on every portion of the building. Unfortunately the work of reconstruction is left almost entirely to imagination, which derives but little help from the shapeless heaps into which time has converted those ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... modification of a playhouse of Shakespeare's day. Evidently Inigo Jones contemplated the erection of a permanent architectural proscenium, as the ancients called it, of the type, though far more modest, both in scale and ornamentation, of Palladio's Theatro Olimpico at Vicenza, which we know he visited in about 1600, some twenty years after its erection. This proscenium, given in plan and elevation, shows a semi-circular structure with a radius of fifteen ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... new religion. They gave to Buddhist art—which was just beginning to appear in the Gandharian provinces—its outward form, its type of figures, its range of personages and the greater part of its ornamentation.[9] ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... remarks on the concertos run counter to those made by W. von Lenz. The F minor Concerto he holds to be an uninteresting work, immature and fragmentary in plan, and, excepting some delicate ornamentation, without originality. Nay, he goes even so far as to say that the passage-work is of the usual kind met with in the compositions of Hummel and his successors, and that the cantilena in the larghetto is in the jejune style of Hummel; the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... instruction dispensed there. There were noble staircases, the floors were covered with cocoa-nut matting, the rooms admirably heated with hot-water pipes, there were plaster casts and officials. In the first room the students practised drawing from the flat. Engraved outlines of elaborate ornamentation were given them, and these they drew with lead pencil, measuring the spaces carefully with compasses. In about six months or a year the student had learned to use his compass correctly, and to produce a fine hard black-lead outline; the harder ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Nowell's pompous funeral at St. Paul's in February, 1568/9, among long lists of unknown men and women, high and low, who had mourning given them, among bills for fees to officials, for undertakers' charges, for heraldic pageantry and ornamentation, for abundant supplies for the sumptuous funeral banquet, are put down lists of boys, from the chief London schools, St. Paul's, Westminster, and others, to whom two yards of cloth were to be given to make their gowns: and at the head ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... familiar than any other I could think of at the time. It was measurably the same within the church, but it was not quite the same in the reserves I was obliged to make, the reefs I was obliged to take in my rapture. The fact is, that unless you delight in a hugeness whose bareness no ornamentation can, or does at least, conceal, you do not find the interior of St. Peter's adequate to the exterior. In the mere article of hugeness, even, it fails through the interposition of the baldachin midway of the vast ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... hundred bosom friends, in answering whose epistolary gushings much stationery was consumed. A pistol, a massive crust of bread, and an oval box containing all the dainty appliances for the culture, preservation, and ornamentation of the finger-nails, made ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... and dripping with rain, took upon themselves a sleek and shining ugliness, as of second-hand garments; the absence of cornices or projections to break the monotony of the long straight lines of downpour made the town appear as if it had been recently submerged, every vestige of ornamentation swept away, and only the bare outlines left. Mud was everywhere; the outer soil seemed to have risen and invaded the houses even to their most secret recesses, as if outraged Nature was trying to revenge herself. Mud was brought into the saloons and barrooms and express offices, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... arch-shape, which in portal, window, vaulting or tympanum is round; wherever the arcaded form is used,—always round. With this suggestion of outline, and the universal principles of the style, simplicity and dignity and absence of great ornamentation, the untechnical traveller may distinguish the Romanesque of the South, and if he be akin to the traveller who tells these Cathedral tales, the interest and fascination which the old architecture awakes, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... had promised he would realise when he was free; but he had not properly reduced the theories to method, and he applied them unseasonably, with the awkwardness of a pupil lacking the sacred fire; he experimented with terra-cotta and pottery ornamentation, large bay windows, and especially with the employment of iron—iron girders, iron staircases, and iron roofings; and as the employment of these materials increased the outlay, he again ended with a catastrophe, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... monster-vegetation of the Eastern archipelago; the little glass temple is in the gardens, under which the Victoria lily was first coaxed into British bloom; a model village has sprung up at the Park gates, in which each cottage is a gem, and seems transplanted from the last book on rural ornamentation. But the sight of the village oppresses one with a strange incongruity; the charm of realism is wanting; it needs a population out of one of Watteau's pictures,—clean and deft as the painted figures; flesh and blood are too gross, too prone to muddy shoes, and to—sneeze. The rock-work, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... museum, which possesses good ivories. The church of S. Francesco has a Gothic facade and cloisters. There are also some good Renaissance palaces and other buildings, including the Municipio, begun in 1492 and completed by Jacopo Sansovino in 1554-1574. This is a magnificent structure, with fine ornamentation. The church of S. Maria dei Miracoli (1488-1523) is also noteworthy for its general effect and for the richness of its details, especially of the reliefs on the facade. Many other churches, and the picture gallery (Galleria Martinengo), contain fine works of the painters of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... self-possession, we all advanced for a closer look at the murderous object dangling before us. We found it to be a heavy leaden weight painted on its lower end to match the bosses of stucco-work which appeared at regular intervals in the ornamentation of the ceiling. When drawn up into place, that is, when occupying the hole from which it now hung suspended, the portion left to protrude would evidently bear so small a proportion to its real bulk as to justify any ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... we women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator; human nature's fringes, mere finishing touches, not a part of the texture,' said Diana; 'the pretty ornamentation. However, I fancy I perceive some tolerance growing in the minds of the dominant sex. Our old lawyer Mr. Braddock, who appears to have no distaste for conversations with me, assures me he expects the day to come when women will be encouraged to work at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... building; but let not an interior be made with recesses and projections and pillars and domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to that, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... man may have concentrated no less will and expectation on his wristbands, gaiters, and the shape of his hat-brim, or an appearance which impresses you as that of the modern "swell," than the Ojibbeway on an ornamentation which seems to us much more elaborate. In what concerns the search for admiration at least, it is not true that the effect is equal to the cause and resembles it. The cause of a flat curl on the masculine forehead, such as might be seen when George the Fourth was king, must have been widely ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... are useful for joining together edges of cushion covers, bags, detached bands, also for the ornamentation of dress, and for embroideries upon which drawn thread work is not possible. A stout thread is usually suitable for the purpose. The raw edges must first be turned in and flattened, and the parts to be joined can if ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... which we shall meet in our walks through the foreign pavilions. With M. Mueller, who has given his name to a kind of brick covered with enamel on one of its faces, ceramic work becomes a portion of the very fabric itself as well as of its ornamentation. This principle applied with rare talent to the covering of the two domes of the palaces has given a very curious and interesting result. This covering is composed of enamelled tiles of more than 600 varieties which are not superposed one upon another, but ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... with wonder, for though I was now in a fruit and vegetable garden it was wonderfully different to Old Brownsmith's, for here, in addition to exquisite neatness, there was some attempt at ornamentation. As soon as we had passed under the green arch we were on a great grass walk, beautifully soft and velvety, with here and there stone seats, and a group of stone figures at the farther end. Right and left were abundance ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... homeliness and sincerity, and shows the essentially bucolic taste of the people; contrasting in this respect with the parks and gardens of Paris, which show as unmistakably the citizen and the taste for art and the beauty of design and ornamentation. Hyde Park seems to me the perfection of a city pleasure ground of this kind, because it is so free and so thoroughly a piece of the country, and so exempt from any petty ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... See then what kind of work Giotto had been first put to. There is, literally, not a square inch of all that panel—some ten feet high by six or seven wide—which is not wrought in gold and colour with the fineness of a Greek manuscript. There is not such an elaborate piece of ornamentation in the first page of any Gothic king's missal, as you will find in that Madonna's throne;—the Madonna herself is meant to be grave and noble only; and to be attended ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... rule in naval vessels. Of course it was small, though it seemed large to Christy who had spent so much of his leisure time in the cabin of the Florence, his sailboat on the Hudson. It was substantially fitted up, with little superfluous ornamentation; but it was a complete parlor, as a landsman would regard it. From it, on the port side opened the captain's state room, which was quite ample for a vessel no larger than the Bronx. Between it and the pantry on the starboard side, was a gangway leading from the foot of the companion way, by which ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... gilded mirrors, bronzes, engravings, and old family jewelry lying on tables—the whole presenting the appearance of the ornamentation ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... emblem of the capital. This cradle, a real masterpiece, had been designed by Prudhon the artist, and is now in the Imperial Treasury of Vienna, to which it was given by the King of Rome when Duke of Reichstadt. The ornamentation, which is in mother-of-pearl and vermilion, is set on a ground of orange-red velvet. It is formed of a pillar of mother-of-pearl, on which are set gold bees, and is supported by four cornucopias, near which ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... a funny place!" cried Jess, as she and Peggy, carrying a glass lamp which reeked of kerosene, entered their chamber. The walls were of rough boards with no attempt at ornamentation, a gorgeous checked crazy-quilt covered the bed—for though the days are hot on the desert, the nights are quite sharp. The floor, like the walls, was bare, and when the girls peered at themselves in the tiny ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... was of old Norman architecture; low and massive outside: inside, of vast space, only a quarter of which was filled on ordinary Sundays. The walls were disfigured by numerous tablets of black and white marble intermixed, and the usual ornamentation of that style of memorial as erected in the last century, of weeping willows, urns, and drooping figures, with here and there a ship in full sail, or an anchor, where the seafaring idea prevalent through the place had launched ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... unfathomed caves of ocean bear. The emerald-green tail is fringed with transparent golden lace; the malachite body has the sheen of gold; the chief legs are of emerald with ruby joints, and silvery claws; the minor as of amber, while over all is a general sheen of ornamentation of points and blotches of sapphire blue. Long white antennae, delicate and opaque, spring from the head. The decorative hues are not laid on flat, but are coarsely powdered and sprinkled as in the case of one of the rarest of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... is unknown. The first important records of this art are met with in Egypt; but before the Egyptian civilization the men of the early ages probably used color in ornamentation and decoration, and they certainly scratched the outlines of men and animals upon bone and slate. Traces of this rude primitive work still remain to us on the pottery, weapons, and stone implements of the cave-dwellers. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... There were clumps of violet jasper, porphyry, lapis-lazuli, aventurine and syenite scattered around as though the place had been divested of its furnishings in a hurry. I have seen the same things in the HERMITAGE when for architectural elegance, richness of ornamentation and lavishness of decoration it was unequaled by any art museum in the world.... While poking around among the piles of tables and vases that were moved over to one corner I came across a box of paintings that must have been STOLEN from St. Petersburg.[A] ... Here is the ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... on the whole, is distinguished for a dignified but rich simplicity, arising from its plain large surfaces, mingled and edged here and there with fine-cut and elegant ornamentation. The court and buildings of the Wells Theological College have a thoroughly quaint, old-fashioned look, quiet, rigid, and medieval; as if the students reared there could not but be Churchmen of the "Brother Ignatius" stamp, gentlemen, scholars, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... the projecting keystone of the arch will be a bronze representation of an American eagle. On the central panel of the attic will be the inscription: "The United States of America, in Memorial Glorious to Christopher Columbus, Discoverer of America." The ornamentation of the attic consists of representations of Columbus' entrance into Madrid. Crowning all is to be a group in bronze symbolical of Discovery. In this group there will be twelve figures of heroic size, with a gigantic figure ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... of a single type, like most of the houses in Fifth Avenue, but which, while differing in many respects, have a certain general resemblance, that places them all in the same category. The small old country churches of Essex County are not distinguished for fine carving or other ornamentation, and still less by the costliness of their material, for they are mostly built of white pine, but they have an indefinable air of pleasantness about them, as if they graced the ground they stand on, and their steeples seem to float in the air above us. If we enter them on a Sunday forenoon—for ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... colonnades and entrances are replete with rococo decorations. There are garlands of girls used in the friezes at the base of the minarets, caryatides repeated in the vestibules, and everywhere a wealth of ornamentation suggestive of a bountiful harvest. The brilliancy of design is heightened by the color scheme of green and ivory used upon the lattice work and travertine material. Messrs. Bakewell and Brown of San ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... only an expert architectural student could fully appreciate, there is one conspicuous variation which all can see. This is in the tympanum of the triforium arches; in all four instances we notice rugged ornamentation here which occurs nowhere ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... lightly as a mermaid carries her glass, or the figure with the red-gold hair whose back alone we see as she unrolls her map. But it is not easy to say why we should recur to mythology for our national ornamentation, or why the ancient Greeks should be called in where our own history needs the canvas, or why these aerial young women should so comfortably usurp the place of the Guerriere and Constitution, the dauntless little boat between the fires on Lake Erie, or the unsurpassed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... early, but then I always am early, and having ample opportunity for observation, I noted every fine detail of ornamentation with approval, Miss Althorpe's taste being of that fine order which always falls short of ostentation. Her friends are in very many instances my friends, and it was no small part of my pleasure to note their well-known faces among the crowd of those that were ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... thickly with small plates of pure gold, and with a number of gold-headed or gilt, headed nails, used apparently to attach the gold plates to the internal plaster or wood-work. These fragments seem to attest the high ornamentation of the shrine in this instance, which we have no reason to regard is singular or ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... an ordinary sort, were clean and shining. Long strings of dressed deerskin, and a few moccasins hung from the poles round the opening at the top. The moccasins were not decorated in any way, nor were those worn by the women, and I saw no sign of ornamentation of any kind, save the toques with their beaded or braided bands, and the bands on ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... church is still in existence. It is mainly in the Romanesque style and almost destitute of ornamentation. There are, however, some antique paintings of St. Savin's miracles; and the saint's tomb, which is still preserved, is considered to be some twelve hundred years old. The village is gathered about the church, and forms a wide street lined with houses of the fifteenth century, which ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... time to study them) upon just proportion and the value of subtle curves. Moreover, the different household vessels, the stone and bronze lamps, the various table dishes, even the common pottery put to the humblest uses, all have a beauty, a chaste elegance, a saving touch of deft ornamentation, which transforms them out of "kitchen ware" into works of art. Those black water pots covered with red-clay figures which the serving maids are bearing so carelessly into the scullery at the screaming ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... continue to inspect the minute and comical details of my dwelling. Here, instead of handles such as we should have made to pull these movable partitions, they have made little oval-holes, just the shape of a finger-end, into which one is evidently to put one's thumb. These little holes have a bronze ornamentation, and, on looking closely, one sees that the bronze is curiously chased: here is a lady fanning herself; there, in the next hole, is represented a branch of cherry in full blossom. What eccentricity there is in the taste of this people! To bestow ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... of the late 1600's was an ornate masterpiece of the foundryman's art, covered with escutcheons, floral relief, scrolls, and heavy moldings, the most characteristic of which was perhaps the banded muzzle (figs. 23b-c, 25, 26a-b), that bulbous bit of ornamentation which had been popular with designers since the days of the bombards. The flared or bell-shaped muzzle (figs. 23a, 26c, 27), did not supplant the banded muzzle until the eighteenth century, and, while the flaring bell is a usual characteristic of ordnance founded between 1730 ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... waist was wrought likewise in beads. Beneath the level of the table, as she stood, the inquiring eyes might not so clearly see; yet the white leggings, fringed and beaded, and covered by a sweeping blanket of snowy buckskin, might have been seen to finish at the ankle and blend in texture and ornamentation with tiny shoes, which covered the smallest foot yet seen in Paris—shoes at the side of which there dangled the little bells of metal whose tones had told ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... examination of the rocks revealed many colours, that figured but little in the grand colour scheme of the canyon as a whole—the detailed ornamentation of the magnificent rock structure. A fracture of wall would show the true colour of the rock, beneath the stain; lime crystals studded its surface, like gems glinting in the sunlight; beautifully tinted jasper, resembling the petrified wood found in ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... up to the attic at a pace that took her breath away, and found the artist finishing the ornamentation of a box to be presented to the adored Hortense. The framework of the lid represented hydrangeas—in French called Hortensias—among which little Loves were playing. The poor lover, to enable him to pay for the materials of the box, of which the panels were of malachite, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... projecting knob-like character, e.g. button-mushrooms, the button of an electric bell-push, or the guard at the tip of a fencing foil; or which resemble a button in size and shape, as the button of metal obtained in assaying operations. At first buttons were apparently used for purposes of ornamentation; in Piers Plowman (1377) mention is made of a knife with "botones ouergylte," and in Lord Berner's translation of Froissart's Chronicles (1525) of a book covered with crimson velvet with "ten botons of syluer and gylte." While this use has continued, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... heard English, American, French, Italian. They saw men and women with that air which no one can define yet everyone knows on sight—the assurance without impertinence, the politeness without formality, the simplicity that is more complex than the most elaborate ornamentation of dress or speech or manner. Susan and Freddie lingered until the departure of the last couple—a plainly dressed man whose clothes on inspection revealed marvels of fineness and harmonious color; a quietly dressed woman whose costume from tip of plume ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... There was rich furniture, carpets of softest velvet covered the floors, mirrors and paintings filled the walls; there were exquisite vases of delicate tints and graceful forms, finest statuary, innumerable and endless articles of ornamentation, and, lying about in rich profusion, were costly silks and glittering satins and rare laces; jewellery flashed out here and there; diamonds and pearls and all precious gems in beautiful settings, novels in costly binding, ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... by bandoline, her garibaldis by an arrangement which failed when applied to those of the widow, and her opinions by the simple process of looking at everything from one point of view. Her forte was dress and general ornamentation; not that Miss Letitia was extravagant—far from it. If one may use the expression, she utilized for ornament a hundred bits and scraps that most people would have wasted. But, like other artists, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... little farther over his eyes, though, like many if not most "horsey" men, he usually wore it rather far down, and leaning over, twirled the whip in the socket between his two fingers and thumb. John studied the stitched ornamentation of the dashboard until the reins were pushed into his hands. But it was not for long. David straightened himself, and, without turning his head, resumed them as if that were ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... must not be confounded with the alto part of to-day. Here it means the cantus firmus, the melody around which the old composers wove their contrapuntal ornamentation. ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... human bones, which evidently belonged only to one individual, as no portion was duplicated; also a few animals' bones. There was an extraordinary number of fragments of pottery, belonging to about 24 different urns, of which 11 could be put together. Their form and ornamentation were both fine and varied, an interesting witness to the ceramics of the grey past.... Among the stone implements found were a great many flint-knives; two stone hatchets, two chisels, and a gouge, all ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... I do not quite understand the mystery of it," I said. "But you never saw lovelier ornamentation than these silvery scales, with all the neatness of what you ladies call a set pattern, and none of the stiffness, for there are not two of them the same in form. And you never saw lovelier curves than this little patient creature, which does not even try to get away from me, makes ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... of design in variegated tiles, &c., that the contractor gave it up as a bad job. I mention this to show that the tendency to build good cottages has gone even beyond what was really required, and ornamentation is added to utility. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... of the antique relievi which the facade of the palace had been designed to display was brought out by the intense illumination. In its lavish ornamentation and elegant proportions the building suggested a carved ivory cabinet, but one rifled of its jewels, for except for the keeper of the gate-lodge, to whom he had tossed his bridle, he had met no guards. The great doorway stood invitingly open, but Brandilancia hesitated to enter and looked about ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the colonnade in Pall Mall, near Her Majesty's Theater, is being laid with this paving, which is also being extensively used in London and the provinces for roads, tramways, and flooring; the composition is likewise sometimes cast into artistic forms for the ornamentation of buildings, or into slabs for roofing, facing, and other purposes. The subway from the Exhibition to the District Railway is laid ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... occupation but interest for the able-bodied men and women. There was no little rivalry in the matter of interior embellishments; those skilled in the use of implements took great pride in hewing out and adding more or less elaborate ornamentation to the facades of their habitations,—such as casements, door-posts and capitals, awnings, porches, and so forth. A shell road was in process of construction from one end of the village to the other, while over in Dismal Forest woodsmen were even now cutting down the towering ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... in his pocket and drew forth a length of chain. The small, delicate links were carved from a single piece of wood, and at the end, like an ornamentation, hung a carved cage in which rolled a little wooden ball. It was all very ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... Sukiya may signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment. It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some thing unfinished for the play of the imagination ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... between the great ware-houses that line Mission Street. The hot streets were odorous of leather and machine-oils, ropes and coffee. Over the door of what had been Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's hung a new bright sign, "Hunter, Hunter & Brauer." Susan caught a glimpse, through the plaster ornamentation of the facade, of old Front Office, which seemed to be full of brightly nickeled samples now, and gave back a blinking flash of light to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... First and later periods of the Bronze Age; Evolution of the bronze celt; Ornamentation of bronze celts; Palstave with double loops; Anvil and hammers; Spear-heads; Evolution from the knife-dagger; Type derived from the rapier; Leaf-shaped spear-heads; Spear-heads with apertures in the blade; Moulds for casting ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... thinking no harm, went in like a simple tourist, and was soon lost in admiration of the splendid Brahmin ornamentation which everywhere met his eyes, when of a sudden he found himself sprawling on the sacred flagging. He looked up to behold three enraged priests, who forthwith fell upon him; tore off his shoes, and began to beat him with loud, savage ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... means a large handbill for pasting on walls: in Queen Mary's time they meant by it a double stomacher,—namely an ornamentation for the front of a dress, put on separate from it, which might either be plain silk or velvet, or else worked with beautiful embroidery, gold twist, sometimes even pearls ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... representing the endless sky and a gold sun with 32 rays soaring above a golden steppe eagle in the center; on the hoist side is a "national ornamentation" ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... simple, earnest, and direct, unincumbered by that rhetorical ornamentation which the American people have always admired as the highest form of eloquence. Those Northerners who had expected magniloquent periods and exaggerated outbursts of patriotism were disappointed; and as they listened in vain for the scream of the eagle, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... a cross peculiar in form, and known as the "Canterbury cross." It is in the shape of the letter Y, and is usually seen only upon the vestments of the clergy. The ornamentation of the chasuble is commonly of this form. It is embroidered on the chasuble of St. Thomas of Canterbury, which is still preserved in the Cathedral {63} of Sens, in France. Its shape brings to mind the inclination of our Saviour's arms—the lifting up ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... of the best of these old rifles have been preserved and are really beautiful weapons, with delicate hair triggers, gracefully curved stocks, and quaint brass or even gold or silver mountings. The ornamentation was often done by the hunter himself, who would melt a gold or silver coin and pour it into some design which he had carved with his knife ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... real gift with his tongue. He stood high in the opinion of the big folk at Westminster, and had a future. He had a winning way with women—a subtle, perniciously attractive way with her sex, and to herself he had been delicately persuasive. He had the ancient gift of picturesqueness without ornamentation. He had a strong will and a healthy imagination. He was a man of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... short reign of Edward VI., great destruction was wrought in the structure and ornamentation of St. Paul's, and no thanks are due to the "Protector" that the mischief was not greater. There was no sign for a month or two. Edward ascended the throne on January 28, 1547, and just two months later the French king, Francis I., died. On that occasion, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... used in common parlance to express any kind of superficial or superfluous ornamentation. A poet is said to embroider the truth. But such metaphorical use of the word hints at the real nature of the work—embellishment, enrichment, added. If added, there must first of all be something it is added to—the material, that is to say, on which the needlework is done. In weaving ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... from Breguet and Meunier,—very plain repeaters, without ornamentation or figures, the face covered with glass, the back gold. M. Las Casas speaks of a watch with a double gold case, marked with the cipher "B," and which never left the Emperor. I never saw anything of the sort, though I was keeper of all the jewels, and even had ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... heart; a falsehood, before it left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth. She was a florid, improvident liar. There was no classical parsimony about her misstatements. They were copious baroque, and encrusted with pleasing and unexpected tricks of ornamentation. That tropical redundancy for which her person was renowned reflected itself likewise in her temperament—in nothing more than the exuberance of her untruths which were poured out in so torrential a flood, with such burning conviction at the opulence ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... building we study the old portraits, concluding that the wigs must have been uncomfortable. Octavius wickedly hints that there is a fashion among ladies of the present time!—but as he does not tread on our toes, we ignore this insinuation, and turn our attention to the elaborate ornamentation of the woodwork—which is all antique hand-carving—in the council chambers; and are much interested in some rare old books in the Library,—among them a copy of the Psalms, three hundred years old; and another, with music, dated 1612. Here also ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned, the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and wastes on the fashion of the hour what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... refer to their "dark bronze" colour, to the wearing by women of the perineal band (to which, however, is added a mantle and "in most cases" a grass petticoat, which is not done in Mafulu), to the absence of tattooing or cicatrical ornamentation, to their "large earrings made out of tails of lizards covered by narrow straps of palm leaves dyed yellow" (which, though not correctly descriptive of the Mafulu earring, is apparently something like it), to their use of pigs' tails as ear ornaments, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... and palaces General features of Grecian architecture The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders Simplicity and beauty of their proportions... The horizontal lines of Greek and the vertical lines of Gothic architecture Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian sculpture Superiority of Greek sculpture Ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and distinguished men The great sculptors of antiquity Their ideal excellence Antiquity of painting in Babylon and Egypt Its gradual development in Greece Famous Grecian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... profession, for at Citta di Castello, when he was summoned to Perugia to appraise the work of Maestro Torzuolo, he was engaged in making for the canons there a wooden ceiling for the nave of their church, which was, by a contract dated 1499, to be ornamented with large roses similar to the ornamentation of the ceiling of the council-hall in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence; giving us thus another indication of the degree of general interest and attention which these works excited in those days. The communication between city and city was difficult and comparatively unfrequent, yet the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... unfamiliar one to the young engineer, but he glanced about him with quickened interest. The walls of the huge room, like the exterior, were painted a garish blue, the floor bare but scrubbed clean, and the chairs and tables had been obviously selected with a view to utility and strength rather than ornamentation. No attempt had been made to render the place attractive and in this Gentleman Geoff's psychology was sound; Limasito wanted its play, like its ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... wall of his study hung two Chinese water-colours and a photograph of Gerome's Cleopatra before Caesar; on the opposite wall, a very beautiful photograph of what was doubtless an Italian picture of the Last Day. That was all the ornamentation. On his table, there always lay a Virgil and a Horace in a pocket edition, and for a long time a French translation ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... negligence she had seriously wounded the feelings of Maggie, senior. The truth was, she had never thought of Maggie. She ought to have remembered that funeral cards were almost the sole ornamentation of Maggie's ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... more obviously needed raiment is by the poor, chilly, bodily human being. I will not enlarge upon the practical uses which recent ethnology has discovered in the tattooing, the painting, the masks, headdresses, feather skirts, cowries and beads, of all that elaborate ornamentation with which, only a few years back, we were in the habit of reproaching the poor, foolish, naked savages; additional knowledge of their habits having demonstrated rather our folly than theirs, in taking ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... industry. The domination of the French Galerie des Modes was due to the inventive minds of French women in relation to everything pertaining to headdress, to detailed and delicate arrangements of every phase of ornamentation. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the period of early manhood, and a strongly marked resemblance in feature and form indicated plainly that they stood to each other in the relation of father and son. Both were clothed in leather, with the usual ornamentation of beads, scalp-locks, and feathers. Their faces, however, were not disfigured with war-paint—a sign that at that time they were at peace with ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... carving of small flat idols of Minerva [Greek: glaukopis][6] of marble, almost in the forms of two discs, which adhered to each other, and upon which the owl's face is rudely scratched. The Trojan treasure certainly shows more art, but it is characterized by an absence of ornamentation. In Mycenae, on the contrary, the monuments which I have brought to light show a high state of civilization, and the skill with which the gold ornaments are made leads us to pre-suppose a school of domestic ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... band (top) and green horizontal band one-half the width of the red band; a white vertical stripe on the hoist side bears Belarusian national ornamentation in red ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... act, the Chief of Engineers has selected four eminent bridge engineers to submit competitive designs for a bridge combining the elements of strength and durability and such architectural embellishment and ornamentation as will fitly apply to the dedication, "A memorial to American patriotism." The designs are now being prepared, and as soon as completed will be submitted to the Congress by the Secretary of War. The proposed bridge would be a convenience ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... mention a remarkable old cabinet in one of these state rooms, which Perry recognized as a specimen of Bruges carving of the fifteenth century. It is a very curious and wonderfully ingenious piece of work, the ornamentation appearing at first like a rather confused grouping of flowers and fruit cut in high relief, but seen at the proper angle rich and beautiful compositions are discovered of the most intricate and difficult character—processions of cupids, leading leopards ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... white-painted woodwork, brightens the facade and emphasizes the fenestration. Most of the lintels take the shape of a flat, gauged arch with flutings simulating mortar joints that radiate from an imaginary center below and mark off voussoirs and a keystone. Usually there is no surface ornamentation, the shape of the parts being depended upon to form a decorative pattern, the shallow vertical and horizontal scorings on the lintels of the Morris house being exceptional. These, the lintels of Cliveden and of the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... eye from the harmony of its tints with those of the flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden side, above the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and around the middle windows. On both sides of the house the ornamentation of the principal window, which projected some feet from the wall, rose to the frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion, hung there like a lantern. The casings of the other windows were inlaid on the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... treatise on the Beginnings of Art (111, etc.), thereby marring his chapter on "Personal Decoration." In the following pages I shall show, on the contrary, that when we subject these primitive customs of "ornamentation" and mutilation to a critical examination we find in nearly every case that they are either not at all or only indirectly (not esthetically), connected with the relations of the sexes; and that neither does personal beauty exist as a rule among savages, nor have ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a treatise on Organum, and outlined a scheme of dividing the interval, which developed into ornamentation, passing notes, and grace notes. The Dublin Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... result of which was, of course, a larger growth and nobler ideal than the more ornamental Etrurian mind could attain. This points to an Eastern origin more in kinship with the Persian than the Greek, and to-day only illustrated by the Persian ornamentation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... of long standing of President McKinley, and he again enjoined that I should declare his sentiments to the President. A beautiful work of wood carving was shown on an easel, which had a frame of hard wood, the whole, easel and frame, with elaborately wrought ornamentation, cut out of one tree. It was at once strong and graceful, simple and decorative. The picture was a gold medallion, raised on a plate of silver, an excellent likeness of his grace. It was evident that the refinements of art were known to "these barbarians of the Philippines," ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... think, on the earth, a building more remarkable than the cathedral of Seville, and hardly one more grand. Its enormous size; its gloom and darkness; the richness of ornamentation in the details, contrasted with the severe simplicity of the larger outlines; the variety of its architecture; the glory of its paintings; and the wondrous splendour of its metallic decoration, its altar-friezes, screens, rails, gates, and ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... or dark gray, while the whitish under parts were streaked with dusk, and there were yellow decorations on the wings and tails, whether the birds were at rest or in flight. When the wings were spread and in motion, the golden ornamentation gave them a filmy appearance. On the wing, the birds, as I afterwards observed, often chirped a little lay that bore a close resemblance in certain parts to the "pe-chick-o-pe" of the American goldfinch. Indeed, a number of their notes suggested that bird, as did also their manner of flight, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... primitive art, also, requires a word of explanation. The primitive man seldom makes purely ornamental objects, but, on the other hand, most of his articles of daily use have an ornamental character. We have to consider primitive art, therefore, as represented in the form and ornamentation of all these objects, constituting practically an household inventory, with the addition of certain drawings and paintings which do not appear to serve a definite practical end. These last, however, constitute only a small proportion of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... blasts from the ivory-horn, with its hideous ornamentation of human teeth, proclaimed the advent of another day I took Omar aside and told him of what I had witnessed and overheard. After I had described the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... light green, with narrow bands of red down the sides of each plank. The table was yellow, the chairs blue, and their bottoms red, by way of harmonious variety. But the grand point—the great masterpiece in the ornamentation of this apartment—was the centre-piece in the ceiling, in the execution of which there was an extraordinary display of what can be accomplished by the daring flight of an original genius revelling in the conscious possession of illimitable ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... does not believe in ornament, and this glimpse of character might be uttered in one sentence. Perhaps, however, a tendency to ornamentation might have made the poem at least decorative. After all, when one has emerged from the rarefied atmosphere of the Imagist, the Symbolist, and the vers librist, one swims into the splendours of Francis Thompson as one might take refuge from a wooden farmhouse ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... (sixty in number), with all their graceful carving, and the misereres, with their grotesque ornamentation underneath, have in part had to be restored, while the sub-stalls are new, dating from Sir Gilbert Scott's restoration, which was finished ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... unparalleled splendour of Moorish decoration. It is a square room, very lofty, with alcoves on three sides, at the bottom of which are windows; and the walls are covered, from the dado of tiles to the roof, with the richest and most varied ornamentation. The Moorish workmen did not spare themselves nor economise their exuberant invention. One pattern follows another with infinite diversity. Even the alcoves, and there are nine, are covered each with different ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... belonged to a volunteer company, one of many and all rivals. It was gayly coloured. On the sides of its waterbox were scenic paintings of some little merit. The woodwork was all mahogany. Its brass ornamentation was heavy and brought to a high state of polish. From a light rack along its centre dangled two beautifully chased speaking trumpets, and a row of heavy red-leather helmets. Axes nestled in sockets. A screaming gilt eagle, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... she been left to her instincts, Edith would have surrounded herself with objects representing a much earlier stage of artistic development; but she was quick to imitate what fashion declared becoming. Her husband regarded her as a remarkable authority in all matters of personal or domestic ornamentation. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... feet high, each story lighted by a single window, the highest compartment having invariably four lancet windows opening to the cardinal points of the compass. The roof is conical, made of overlapping stone slabs, and a circle of grotesquely carved heads and zigzag ornamentation is found beneath the projecting cornice. The masonry is of hewn stone, but not the least regularity is observable in the size or shape of the blocks, some being very large, others small, and every figure known to the geometrician can ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... faster and faster, turned suddenly to the left and found myself, excited and angry, in a light ornate doorway. I did not pause, not for one second, but the whole peculiar ornamentation of the entrance struck on my perception in a flash; every detail of the decoration and the tiling of the floor stood clear on my mental vision as I sprang up the stairs. I rang violently on the second floor. Why should I stop exactly on the second floor? And why just seize hold ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... pillars. It is lighted on one side by a window formed by a slab with quatrefoil openings, and on the other by a marigold or Catherine-wheel window with spiral mullions. The capitals of the pillars are carved with beautiful ornamentation and grotesque figures, which are still sharp and well defined.[198] There are three sedilia, and the high altar seems to have been of marble. North of the nave is the cloister-garth; to the north and east of the cloisters are the refectory and chapter-house; the building over the chapter-house was ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story |
