"Arabesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confessed that they could produce nothing equal to it in workmanship, though Kit looked with contempt at the slight weapon of deep blue steel, with lines meandering on it like a watered silk, and the upper part inlaid with gold wire in exquisite arabesque patterns. He called it a mere toy, and muttered something about sorcery, and men who had been in foreign parts not thinking honest weight of English steel good enough ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dips down to the dingle, A coppice in arabesque gleams Whose traceries melt and commingle, Like ghost trees in moon-fretted streams, As the tremulous glamour sweeps o'er it And skirts the inscrutable sky; Then, Fairyland flitting before it, The car ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... the receiving room. This was a large room, with a splendidly inlaid and polished floor, the walls covered with crimson satin, the cornices heavily incrusted with gold, and the ceiling beautifully painted in arabesque. The massive fauteuils and sofas, as also the drapery, were of crimson satin with a profusion of gilding. The ubiquitous portrait of the Emperor was the only picture, and was the same you see everywhere. This crimson ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it carefully, while Melky stood at his elbow, watching. The mysterious volume was certainly worthy of close inspection— a small quarto, wonderfully bound in old dark crimson morocco leather, and ornamented on sides and back with curious gold arabesque work: a heavy clasp, also intricately wrought, held the boards together. Lauriston, something of a book lover, whose natural inclination was to spend his last shilling on a book rather than on beef and bread, ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... to the stories, poems, essays and critiques which the indefatigable Dreamer was putting out, he found time to publish a collection of his "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," in book form. He was also (unfortunately for him) induced to prepare a work on sea-shells for the use of schools—"The Conchologist's First Book," it was called. This was unmistakably a mere "pot-boiler" and confessedly a compilation, but it set the little authors whose namby-pamby works the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... "stem stitch" (wrongly called also, "crewel stitch," as it has no claim to being used exclusively in crewel embroidery). It is most useful in work done in the hand, and especially in outlines of flowers, unshaded leaves, and arabesque, ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... intricate, one might almost suppose that the matchless tool of the famous Benevanta Cellini had traced its wild and graceful grotesque. The four claws, which are like roots from the stem of the pedestal, partake of the same rich arabesque in their design, and terminate in the form ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... good." The two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April 3, 1880, of "Young Folks—a magazine of instructive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages," containing "A Sequel to Desdichado" (the modern development ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... appearance at the National Theatre in Philadelphia, while Fanny Ellsler appeared at the Park Theatre in New York City. Ralph Waldo Emerson published the "Dial." Other notable publications in American letters were Poe's "Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque," Willis's "Loiterings of Travel," Cooper's "Pathfinder," and Dana's ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... magnificence challenges all description. It might be said that there was a quantity of fairy flower and kitchen gardens in the sea, full of gigantic flowers, blossoms, and leaves, varied by fungi and pulse of every description, like open arabesque work, the whole interspersed with pretty groups of rocks of every hue. The most lovely shell-fish were clinging to these rocks, or lying scattered on the ground, while endless shoals of variegated fish darted in and out between them, like so many butterflies and humming-birds. These delicate ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... caryatides in the place of brackets. The rich burnt-sienna tint of the carvings contrasts finely with the golden-brown of the massive marble walls,—a combination which is shown in no other building of the Middle Ages. The sunken rosettes, surrounded by raised arabesque borders, between the caryatides, are sculptured with such a careful reference to the distance at which they must be seen, that they appear as firm and delicate as if near the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... several figures were added or replaced and the stem repaired. The Scuola dei Battuti, built in 1451, has a door with a frescoed tympanum beneath a pointed arch on brackets, a good deal weather-worn—Madonna sheltering the penitents beneath her cloak—and pretty arabesque ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... de R——d is not more distinguished by its profuse decoration, than by the fine taste which has guided the vast expenditure. Its halls of arabesque are almost without a rival; there is not the slightest embellishment in which the hand and feeling of art are not recognised. The rooms were very crowded; everybody distinguished in Paris was there: the lady of the Court, the duchess of the Faubourg, the wife of the financier, the constitutional ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... baron looked from her through the folding doors into a retiring apartment, set with arabesque designs, and adorned with inlaid tables bearing statues of alabaster and enamel. Purposely he waited before he replied, and was gratified to see how curiously she regarded him when again his glance ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... mutually appreciative. Their next meeting took place in Lady Everington's drawing-room, where Barrington had already heard fair ladies praising the gifts and graces of the young diplomat. He heard him play the piano; and he also heard the appreciation of discerning judgment. He heard him talking with arabesque agility. It was Geoffrey's turn to feel on the wrong side of a vast superiority, and in his turn he repaid the old debt of admiration; generosity filled the gulf and the two became firm friends. Reggie's ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the dining room she paused to look back at the veranda. She wanted to remember every arabesque that the vines were tracing in silhouette against the moonlit sea; but she could not see anything distinctly. As she left the restaurant some one presented her with a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... all the other things of life as not worth a straw; and that, if such were her wish, he would forever be as silent as the grave, and last no scandal would besmear her virtue. And the lewd fellow, perceiving that the lady did not stop her ears, commenced to describe to her, after the fashion of arabesque pictures, which at that time were much esteemed, the wanton inventions of debauchery. Then did his eyes shoot flame, his words burn, and his voice ring, and he himself took great pleasure in calling to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... should illustrate those peculiarities, "something in the Haroun Alrasched style" that should have a dash of that Arabian spice which pervades every thing in Spain. The author set to work, con amore, and has produced two goodly volumes, with a few "Arabesque" sketches and tales founded on popular traditions. His study was THE ALHAMBRA, which must have inspired him for his task. To quote his own words: "how many legends and traditions, true and fabulous; how many songs and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... away from the record, but the book fell open of itself at a full-page insert of the Decalogue, illuminated by some artless printer with gaudy splotches of gold, red and blue and green initials, and silly curlicues of arabesque, as if the man had been ignorant of what they meant, those ten pillars of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... cathedral, around which cluster many interesting historical associations, and whereof we propose to give a brief description.[41] It is of the Byzantine order, but the architect has employed in its decoration a large amount of Moorish or arabesque ornament, and the whole building resembles a beautiful large mausoleum. The stone with which the cathedral is faced has usually been called marble, but it is a whitish grey limestone somewhat resembling lithographic stone,[42] which ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof—quartering of the Christian shield,—rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... hall of Monte Beni, moreover, was adorned, at its upper end, with two pillars that seemed to consist of Oriental alabaster; and wherever there was a space vacant of precious and variegated marble, it was frescoed with ornaments in arabesque. Above, there was a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with pictured scenes, which affected Kenyon with a vague sense of splendor, without his twisting his neck to gaze ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... longer in touch with natural and popular interests, nor stimulated by mutual cooperation with their brother craftsmen, the mason builders, they adopted the fashionable mode of expression invented by the new architects and the painters of the time. Elaborate "arabesque" and other formal designs gave employment to the carvers, in making an infinite repetition of fiddles, festoons, and ribbons, in the execution of which they became so proficient, that their work is more often admired for its exquisite finish ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... lady's prior proceedings were now explained in the simplest manner. In the midst of her breast, like an island in a sea of pearl, reclined an exquisite little gold locket, embellished with arabesque work of blue, red, and white enamel. That was undoubtedly what Miss Aldclyffe had been contemplating; and, moreover, not having been put off with her other ornaments, it was to be retained during the night—a slight departure from ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... versification of the 'Silver Veil,' and a little embarrassed with his horrors; but the conception of the character of the impostor is fine, and the plan of great scope for his genius,—and I doubt not that, as a whole, it will be very Arabesque ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... shade. The Alhambra was nothing to it! The floor was yellow ochre; the ceiling was sky-blue; the cornices were scarlet, with flutings of blue and yellow, and, underneath, a broad belt of fruit and foliage, executed in an extremely arabesque style. The walls were 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 ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... The secretary absently drew an arabesque on the blotting-pad. "Of course they'll keep it up longer if you ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... and imagery of the Trionfi have a beauty rather arabesque than classical, and resembling the florid tracery of the later oriental Gothic architecture. But the whole effect of the poem is pleasing, from the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... square pillars, from which spring pointed arches. The door-way is at the side, and is Gothic, with a dash of Saracenic in the ornamental mouldings above it. The large window at the extremity of the nave is remarkable for having round arches, which circumstance, together with the traces of arabesque painted ornaments on the columns, led me to think it might have been a mosque; but Dr. Robinson, who is now here, considers it a Christian church, of the time of the Crusaders. The village of Aboo 'l Ghosh is said to be the site ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the room are mostly tabourets, covered with Cordova leather, embossed in gold and colors and tooled by hand in free arabesque designs. Two long tables extend through the room, and a smaller one occupies the dais: these tables are literally 'boards'—heavy planks jointed together resting on solid, richly-carved trestles, all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Filmot followed their guide into a room fitted up in Eastern style. Divans made of cushions piled one upon another were placed all around the room, with small carpets spread before them. Light stands of beautiful arabesque work were tastefully distributed in various places, and in the centre played a small fountain fed by aromatic water. The lower part of the room contained a recess, the interior of which was concealed by a semi-transparent ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... Through the Arabesque wood carvings of the arcade roof, away up the flight of steps, shafts of light came through brown fretted teak-wood and fell on gold or lacquered vermilion pillars and touched the stall-holders and their bright wares in the shadows on either side ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... half hour the Rajah was occupied in bidding goodby to his guests. When the last had gone he turned and entered the palace, passed through the great halls, and, pushing aside a curtain, entered a small room. The walls and the columns were of white marble, inlaid with arabesque work of colored stones. Four golden lamps hung from the ceiling, the floor was covered with costly carpets, and at one end ran a raised platform a foot in height, piled with soft cushions. He took a turn or two up ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... piano music] the embellishment itself made the starting-point for almost a new art in tonal combination, the effects of which one sees on every hand to-day. To realise its influence one need only compare the easy mastery of the arabesque displayed in the simplest piano piece of to-day with the awkward and gargoyle-like figuration of Beethoven and his predecessors. We may justly attribute this to Liszt rather than to Chopin, whose ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... made by dwarfs, which gives to this wonderful facade the effect of a dream. The baluster of this staircase forms a spiral connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like lace-work. The flowers, the figures of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... of this square, made the entrance to Abbey Hill. When the arch was passed, one felt at once that one was in the town of a former day. The pavement was narrow and rugged; the shops small, their upper stories projecting, with here and there plastered fronts, quaintly arabesque. An ascent, short, but steep and tortuous, conducted at once to the old Abbey Church, nobly situated in a vast quadrangle, round which were the genteel and gloomy dwellings of the Areopagites of the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Kenny. "There's one he missed. Garry, what's back of all this turmoil? What's the real reason for Brian's brain-storm? I'm sick to death of Whitaker's wordy arabesque and abuse. I ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... eloquent music" for the last two hundred years. The third room (a view of which we engrave) is a boudoir, containing the large antique German stove, built up with ornamental tiles cast in relief, with stories from bible history of saints, and arabesque. Beside it is a bronze receptacle for water, shaped like a huge acorn, the tap having a grotesque head, and the spigot being a small seated figure; this was gently turned when wanted, and a thin stream of water trickled over the hands into the basin ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... from these sources both their perspective and their architectural colouring. As for ornamental illumination, the principal method of decoration was a square heading,[10] perhaps including a semicircular arch sweeping over several arcades, the corners and wall-space being occupied either with arabesque patterns, showing them to be after the time of Leo III., or with scrolls of line-ornament enriched with acanthus foliages. Under this the scribe has placed ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... or arcade or colonnade, the whole extent of which was once beautifully adorned by Raphael. These pictures are almost worn away, and so defaced as to be untraceable and unintelligible, along the side wall of the gallery; although traceries of Arabesque, and compartments where there seem to have been rich paintings, but now only an indistinguishable waste of dull color, are still to be seen. In the coved ceiling, however, there are still some bright frescos, in better preservation than any others; not particularly beautiful, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... roof. She could see also a corner of the moat with its running stream, a moat much older than the building it encircled, and beneath her eyes lay a small formal garden planned in the days of John Evelyn—with its fountain and its sundial, and its beds in arabesque. The cold light of December lay upon it all; there was no special beauty in the landscape, and no magnificence in the house or its surroundings. But every detail of what she saw pleased the girl's taste, and satisfied her heart. All the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... carved windows cut in arabesque-work of marble. (India) or basalt (the Hauran) and provided with small panes of glass set in emeralds where tin would be used ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... application of these principles which I have set forth very summarily, Claude Monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the arabesque of their vibrations. A landscape thus conceived becomes a kind of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point, f.i.), and developing all over the canvas the variations of this theme. This ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... glowed like sacrificial fires upon the altar of the west, paled, flickered, died out in ashen grey; and a moon more gold than silver hung in shimmering splendour among the cloud ships, lending a dazzling fringe to their edges, and making quaint arabesque patterns of gilt embroidery on the verandah floor, where the soft light fell through interlacing vines of woodbine and honeysuckle. With the night came silence, broken only by the subdued plaint of the pigeons in the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... epoch often allowed his thoughts and his eyes to penetrate indiscreetly between the bars of that ancient, padlocked gate, twisted, tottering, fastened to two green and moss-covered pillars, and oddly crowned with a pediment of undecipherable arabesque. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... arrange their one dress differently, as a pious Rabbi recommended. They looked used-up and haggard, all these mothers in Israel. But there were dark-eyed damsels still gay and fresh, with artistic bodices of violet and green picked out with gold arabesque. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... young man who, according to custom, begins to read the end of his letters first finds an arabesque of this style at the bottom of a lady's letter, he ought to arm himself with patience and resignation before ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... cognoscere vultus, Area longa patet, sancto contermina Marco, Celsus ubi Adriacas, Venetus Leo despicit undas, Hic circum gentes cunctis e partibus orbis, AEthiopes, Turcos, Slavos, Arabesque, Syrosque, Inveniesque Cypri, Cretae, Macedumque colonos, Innumerosque alios varia regione profectos: Saepe etiam nec visa prius, nec cognita cernes, Quae si cuncta velim tenui describere versu, Heic omnes citius nautas celeresque Phaselos, Et ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... longer than any one else ever did, in admiring the pillar, and rummaging the drawers of the cabinets. At last, the musk with which they are impregnated obliged me to desist, and I moved on to a suite of saloons, with low arched roofs, glittering with arabesque, in azure and gold. Several medallions appear amongst the wreaths of foliage, tolerably well painted, with representations of splendid feasts and tournaments for which Florence was once ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... way," said he, "speaking of authors, what an exquisite poem Tom Moore would have written, had he visited Chapel Island, which you have seen no doubt? (here he gave a little nod with the big hat) and what a rich volume would have dropped from the arabesque pen of your own Irving (another nod), had he written the life of the Baron de St. Castine, chief of the Abenaquis, as he did that of Philip ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... silver, on pedestals of alabaster and of aqua-marine, were ranged along the walls, the delicate beauty of their material and workmanship coming out well against the rich coloring of the hangings behind. The roof, a lofty dome, displayed the light Arabesque workmanship, peculiar to Moorish architecture, as did the form and ornaments of the windows. This apartment opened into another, much smaller, each side of which, apparently formed of silver plate, reflected as mirrors every ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Mozartean. She repeated the stories of the dramas as a child its astronomy lessons, without feeling. She saw Siegmund and Sieglinde entwined in that wondrous Song of Spring, and would have laughed in your face if you hinted that all this was anything but many-colored arabesque. It was her daily bread and butter, and like one of those pudic creatures of the Eleusinian mysteries she lived in the very tropics of passion, yet without one pulse-throb of its feverishness. It was the ritual of Wagner she worshipped; the nerves of his score had never been ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... who blending their shapes and borrowing each other's limbs, frisk all over the walls, and by their gambols and contortions form a pattern of curves and lines, which is a maze of animated life, retaining at the same time the broad and harmonious effect of an arabesque. ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... painted, and the more valuable because few ceilings have been found in existence. We should attempt in vain to describe the complicated subjects, the intricate and varied patterns with which the fertile fancy of the arabesque painter has clothed the walls and ceilings, without the aid of drawings, which we are unable to give; and, indeed, colored plates would be requisite to convey an adequate notion of their effect. In the splendid work which Mr. Donaldson has published ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... than that of the pseudo-Herschel* had created them; and if they had been placed in rank and file, and copied by some skilful painter's hand, one would, without doubt, have exclaimed involuntarily, "What a beautiful arabesque!" ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... each side; in the centre of the square is the palace, surrounded by a colonnade one or two stories high. The pavement is either tessellated or of chequered marble; some of the walls of the rooms are also tessellated with arabesque, borders, the ceilings are painted with gay colours, viz. scarlet, sky-blue, green, yellow, and orange, in arabesque, and some of them are very elegant. The houses of the opulent are diminutive imitations of the palaces. The ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... street of palaces, all with an elusive family resemblance to one another, we paused for consultation. This was Vicenza, the birthplace and beloved town of Palladio; these palaces with fronts crusted with bas relief; these Corinthian pillars, these Arabesque balconies, these porticoes that might have been stolen from Greek temples, all had been designed by Palladio the Great. And the beautiful buildings seemed to say pensively, like lovely court ladies whose day is past, "We are not what we were. Time has changed ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... they set up for the latticed windows colonnettes of gold and silver and noble ores, and the doors of the sitting chamber were made of chaunders-wood alternating with ebony which they studded with jewels and arabesque'd with gold and silver. Also they placed in each sitting-room a pillar of Comorin lign-aloes and the best of sandal-wood encrusted with gems; and over the speak-room they threw cupolas supported upon arches and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... much the more wild must have been the scene to any European who could have beheld them there, in the strong sun and the strong shadow of the banyan, rubbed with saffron to throw in a more high relief the arabesque of the tattoo; the women bleached by days of confinement to a complexion almost European; the chiefs crowned with silver plumes of old men's beards and girt with kirtles of the hair of dead women. All manner of island ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her early habit of sketching heads and characters. Nobody is, I should think, more faithful and exact in the drawing of the academical figures given her as lessons, but there is a perpetual arabesque of fancies that runs round the margin of her drawings, and there is one book which I know she keeps to run riot in, where, if anywhere, a shrewd eye would be most likely to read her thoughts. This book of hers I mean to see, if I can ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... floor and ceiling. The scattered blues and crimsons of the carpets (repeated in duller tones in the old morocco bindings), the gilded tracery of the tooling, and here and there a blood-red lettering-piece, gave an effect as of some dim rich arabesque flung on to the darkness. At this hour the sunlight made the most of all it found there; it washed the faded carpet with a new dye; it licked every jutting angle, every polished surface, every patch ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... yet not too near the wave, and on a sylvan declivity, was along, pavilion-looking building, painted in white and arabesque. It was backed by the forest, which had a park-like character from its partial clearance, and which, after a convenient slip of even land, ascended the steeper country and took the form of wooded hills, backed in due time by still sylvan ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... distinct varieties of cut work, for instance, that known as renaissance embroidery, which is usually composed of an arabesque design from which the background is cut away, leaving the pattern in the linen; the cut edges are outlined and protected by an overcast stitch. The pattern has to be specially planned with the idea of holding strongly together, but, if necessary, buttonholed bars can be added to form strengthening ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... came at the beginning of the week. She carried them upstairs. Her hands took them incredulously from their wrappages. The "squashed strawberry" lay at the top, soft warm clear madder-rose, covered with a black arabesque of tiny leaves and tendrils. It was compactly folded, showing only its turned-down collar, shoulders and breast. She laid it on her bed side by side with its buff companion and shook out the underlying skirt.... How sweet of them to send her ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... as pietra-dura—polished bits of marble, agates, pebbles and lapis lazuli. Ivory was carved and used as bas-reliefs and ivory and tortoise shell, brass and mother-of-pearl used as inlay. Elaborate Arabesque designs inlaid were souvenirs of the Orient, and where the cabinetmaker's saw left a line, the cuts were filled in with black wood or stained glue, which brought out the design and so gave an added ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... the memoranda that I made, lest memory should be unfaithful. When the third cover is unclosed, in the lowest part of the recess on the right hand, beneath a sliding panel, is a spring, on touching which the whole flies back, and discovers a rare device, beautifully wrought in arabesque relief. So far, in all likelihood, you being his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the town. Fee, fr. Opposite the tower is the Chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, 14th cent. Fee, fr. The three tall windows are filled with beautiful old glass. The roof is covered with stone groining, with cleverly-executed arabesque painting between the nervures. The roof of the cathedral is similarly painted, but on a blue ground. It is situated near the Rue de Boigne, and was built in the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... knocking the ashes off his cigar on to the arabesque-patterned tapestry carpet—'why, no, not exactly; but these things, you know, are a good deal matter of course; just describe what you saw, you know, and butter Puff well, that's the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to them geometry is pure science. So I think it may be said that mechanics and osteology are pure science. On the other hand, melody in music is pure art. You cannot reason about it; there is no proposition involved in it. So, again, in the pictorial art, an arabesque, or a "harmony in grey,"[80] touches none but the aesthetic faculty. But a great mathematician, and even many persons who are not great mathematicians, will tell you that they derive immense pleasure from geometrical reasonings. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... graceful and truly classical. It would be hard to find a living author who had displayed such varied powers. As an example of his style we would refer to one of his tales, "The House of Usher," in the first volume of his "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." It has a singular charm for us, and we think that no one could read it without being strongly moved by its serene and sombre beauty. Had its author written nothing else, it would alone have been enough to stamp him as a man of genius, and the master of a classic style. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... streets of commercial buildings, while the new districts of Kasr-el-Dubara and Ghezireh have arisen to house the well-to-do. Our interest in Cairo, therefore, is centred in the native quarters, where miles of streets and alleys, rich in Arabesque buildings, are untouched except by ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... was either right or wrong. But after having been a poet, after having demonstrated an entire social system, I shall revert to science in an Essay on the Human Powers. And around the base of my palatial structure, with boyish glee I shall trace the immense arabesque of my ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... fashion, called me thou in her very first compliment of welcome. Her daughter, then only ten or twelve years old, was very handsome, and a few years later became Duchess de Matalona. The duchess presented me with a snuff-box in pale tortoise-shell with arabesque incrustations in gold, and she invited us to dine with her on the morrow, promising to take us after dinner to the Convent of St. Claire to pay a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Hetty's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle Massey's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above the pegs for the slates; he knew ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... pulled down his waistcoat. As manufacturers of highgrade garments they had accompanied more than one customer to the entertainment described by Benson; but to Elkan the term "ponies" admitted of only one meaning, and this conversational arabesque of flies, little horses, aeroplanes and George DeFrees made ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... quality. Among them is a group of four and eight-hand works for two pianos, as well as duets for a single instrument. Among her most important solo works are a sonata, an Etude Symphonique, a Valse Caprice, a Guitarre, an Arabesque, six Etudes de Concert, five Airs de Ballet, containing the well-known Scarf Dance, six Romances Sans Paroles, and six humourous pieces. She has also written a few selections ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... useful, form of the whole great French school of rounded architecture. And where has that French school its origin? Wholly in the rich conditions of sculpture, which, rising first out of imitations of the Roman bas-reliefs, covered all the facades of the French early churches with one continuous arabesque of floral or animal life. If you want to study round-arched buildings, do not go to Durham, but go to Poictiers, and there you will see how all the simple decorations which give you so much pleasure even in their isolated application ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... his home this convalescent whom he had known months before—elegant and slender, with a delicate and somewhat feminine beauty. His face was now furrowed by a network of scars that had transformed it into a purplish arabesque. Within his body were hidden many such. His left hand had disappeared with a part of the forearm, the empty sleeve hanging over the remainder. The other hand was supported on a cane, a necessary aid in order to be able to move a leg that ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... would pat the arabesque of shining hair that lay coiled so submissively against either glowing cheek. "Oh, my, no! I just thought I'd dress up in case Angie Hatton drove past in her auto and picked me up for a little ride. So's not to ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... the Austrian capital was a no more propitious place to make one's fortune than the smaller town of Leipsic. However he was able to compose a number of works which have become among the best known and beloved of all, including the "Arabesque," "Faschingsschwank," or "Carnival Strains from Vienna," the "Night Pieces," Op. 24, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... always seemed to us, was the cleverest writer in his way that has ever contributed to the English periodicals. His fugitive lyrics and arabesque romances, half sardonic and half sentimental, published with Hookham Frere's "Whistlecraft" and Macaulay's Roundhead Ballads, in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and after the suspension of that work, for the most part in the annual souvenirs, are altogether unequaled in ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... silver; mists of silk embroidered by fairy fingers; plumes colored by the fire of the tropics drooping from haughty heads; pearls twined in braided hair; shot or ribbed or brocaded silks, as though the genius of arabesque had presided over French manufactures,—all this luxury was in harmony with the beauties collected there as if to realize a "Keepsake." The eye received there an impression of the whitest shoulders, some amber-tinted, others so polished as to seem colandered, some dewy, some plump and ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... portion gains another charm from the Moorish windows that pierce it, one above the other, with horseshoe arches; and from the arabesque network with which the upper part is diapered, a brick trellis-work against the brick walls, of the most graceful and delicate intricacy. The Giralda is almost toylike in the daintiness of its decoration. Notwithstanding its great size it is a masterpiece of exquisite proportion. At ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... fictitious, flowers, leaves, fruit, the human form, etc., were conventionalized and made to contribute their part to enhance the beauty of the whole. Some of the principal characteristics of the Cinquecento style are the delicate arabesque scroll work, the profusion and beauty of the curves, its admirable variations of standard classic ornaments, such as the anthemion and scroll. The coloring, also, was one of its most pleasing features. This style flourished principally ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... ceiling decorations now mostly used are in dark, rich colors, shaded in maroons or deep reds. Plain tinted walls and ceilings in fresco or wainscot are also frequently used. The latest shades of wall paper come in wood colors, dark olive-greens, stone color, and grays, in tile, arabesque and landscape designs, and with these are used a corresponding ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... privation than is to be found in the sufferings of our lowest class. But the mind refuses to consider the two states as analogous, and insists upon thinking that the state of physical and moral degradation often found amongst our working classes, with the arabesque of splendour and luxury which surrounds it, is a more shocking thing to contemplate than a pressing scarcity of provisions endured by a wandering horde of savage men sunk in equal barbarism. When we follow men home, who have been cooperating with other civilized ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... of it. Admitting every degree of merit to our present fashionable binders, and frankly allowing them the superiority over De Rome, Padaloup, and the old school of binding, I cannot but wish to see revived those beautiful portraits, arabesque borders, and sharp angular ornaments, that are often found on the outsides of books bound in the 16th century, with calf leather, upon oaken boards. These brilliant decorations almost make us forget the ivory crucifix, guarded with silver doors, which is frequently ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... cherished still by that unchanging race, Are themes for minstrelsy more high than thine; Of strange tradition many a mystic trace, Legend and vision, prophecy and sign; Where wonders wild of Arabesque combine With Gothic imagery of darker shade, Forming a model meet for minstrel line. Go, seek such theme!"—the Mountain Spirit said. With filial awe I heard—I ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... and traced with his finger the arabesque just under the pediment. "See how cunningly it has been blended with the other figures. And here is the emblem of the giver." He pointed to a tiny golden sun with radiating rays on the base of the pediment, just above the monogram. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... like the words of peasants or children. They were rarely beautiful in themselves, rarely even significant, but they suggested a singular kind of beauty and significance, through their adjustment in a pattern or arabesque. Atmosphere, the suggestion of what was not said, was everything; and in an essay in "Le Tresor des Humbles" Maeterlinck told us that in drama, as he conceived it, it was only the words that were ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... mysterious way his wonders to perform." If the greatest of all his wonders be the human individual, the richness with which the specimens thereof are diversified, the limitless variety of outline, from gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the contradictory nature of the filling, composed of little and great, of comic, heroic, and pathetic elements blended inextricably, in personalities all of whom can go, and go successfully, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... of the hour. What a recherche, luxurious extravagant little dinner it was, that evening at the Maison Doree! We had a charming little room overlooking the Boulevard, furnished with as much looking-glass, crimson-velvet, gilding, and arabesque painting as could be got together within the space of twelve-feet by eight. Our wine came to table in a silver cooler that Cellini might have wrought. Our meats were served upon porcelain that would have driven Palissy to despair. We had nothing that was in season, except game, and everything that ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... prelude in D is Chopin at his happiest. Its arabesque pattern conveys a most charming content; and there is a dewy freshness, a joy in life, that puts to flight much of the morbid tittle-tattle about Chopin's sickly soul. The few bars of this prelude, so seldom heard in public, reveal musicianship of the highest order. The harmonic scheme ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... they were loving friends in life, so in death are they undivided! Erected by their affectionate disciples, Bishop and May.' Besides these there are many others all bearing names of mark and fame. The whole is surrounded by a pretty arabesque composed of crowbars and other implements of burglary, pistols, knives, death's heads and cross-bones, halters, handcuffs, and fetters, ingeniously disposed and prettily intertwined with wreaths ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... that these strange designs are not only the manifestation of coquetry or vanity but that they are also made to frighten away the Evil Spirit you may well imagine how they each try to arabesque their skin in a more horrible way than the other, in order to look ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... from the mouths of the four lions; and as it fell, formed diamonds and pearls, resembling a jet d'eau, which springing from the middle of the fountain, rose nearly to the top of a cupola painted in Arabesque. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was conscious of the ebb and flow of blood through my heart, felt it when it eddied up into my face, and touched my brain with its flame-colored wave. I loved life again. The stuff of which each day was woven was covered with an arabesque which suited my fancy. I missed nothing that the present unrolled for me, but looked neither to the past nor to the future. In truth there was little that was elevated in me. Could I have perceived it if there had been? Whichever way the circumstances ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... told us that nowhere in Europe was there anything as fine as the hall and grand staircase where the Duchess received her guests. It exceeded my utmost conceptions of magnificence and beauty. The vast size of the apartment, the vaulted ceilings, the arabesque ornaments, the fine pictures, the profusion of flowers, the music, the flourish of trumpets, as the Queen passed backward and forward, the superb dresses and diamonds of the women, the parti-colored full dress of the gentlemen all contributed ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... dream—not even symbolically. It will be long ere you appreciate more than their fresh joy of existence. But, little by little one herb and flower after the other becomes individualized—they are artists living themselves out into hues and lines and parts of a tableau; the vine draws itself in an arabesque which is perfect because self-forming; and the whole harmonize with the sway of sunlight and shadow, with rustling breeze and hurrying ant on the footpath, and chirping birds, so exquisitely that you may feel, as you never have in studying human art or in poetry, that tones, colors, curves, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the water's side she holds her place, Her bodice bright is set with Genoa lace; O'er her rich robe, through every satin fold, Wanders an arabesque in threads of gold. From its green urn the rose unfolding grand, Weighs down the exquisite smallness of her hand. And when the child bends to the red leafs tip, Her laughing nostril, and her carmine lip, The royal ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... declined. They had by this time reached a low, arched side-door, which grated on its hinges after the padre had turned the huge key in the rusty lock and opened it. They entered a wide stone vestibule, and found themselves opposite another arched door set in arabesque stone carvings: the flags echoed under their feet as they turned to the right and traversed a low, vaulted passage that ended in an open cloister. An arched gallery ran round the four sides, held up by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... pilasters, statuettes, incrusted on the fanciful domed shrine. Upon the facade are mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme impartiality. Medallions of emperors and gods alternate with virtues, angels, and cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the base of the building are told two stories—the one of Adam from his creation to his fall, the other of Hercules and his labors. Italian craftsmen of the quattrocento were not averse to setting thus together, in one frame-work, the myths of our first parents and Alemena's ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... on the AEsquiline; and nothing remains of them but piles of brickwork, and a few subterranean chambers almost choked with rubbish. Some fragments of exquisite arabesque painting are visible on the ceilings and walls; and the gilding and colours are still fresh and bright. The brickwork is perfectly solid and firm, and appeared as if finished yesterday. On the whole the impression on my mind was, that not the slow and gentle hand of time, but sudden rapine and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... enabled to see Omdurman, with Khartoum in the distance. The Mahdi's white, cone-shaped tomb, its dome girt with rings, and ornamented with brazen finials, globe and crescent, shone not six miles away in the midst of miles of mud and straw huts. Four arabesque finials rose, one from each corner of the supporting wall. Before the town was a wall of white tents, the original camping ground of the Khalifa's levies and reinforcements drawn from distant garrisons. Midway to Omdurman, or within three miles of where I stood, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the Spaniards. It is 320 feet long, and was built of hewn stone laid in mortar or cement. The faces of the walls are smooth up to the cornice. Then follows, on all the four sides, "one solid mass of rich, complicated, and elaborately sculptured ornaments, forming a sort of arabesque." Figure 36 gives a view of the south end of this edifice, but no engraving can show all the details ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... countrymen, everything like comic intermixture. He has been censured for an occasional play on language in the expression of feeling. But is it just to exact the severity of the tragical cothurnus in light works of this description? Why should not Poetry also be allowed her arabesque? No person can be more an enemy to mannerism than I am; but to censure it aright, we ought first to understand the degree of nature and truth which we have a right to expect from each species, and what is alone compatible with it. The verses of Quinault have no other navet ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... capable of withstanding a siege if there were no artillery; here are the old houses, one of pre-Gothic construction with very broad Romanesque window, slender columns and storied capitals, billet and arabesque mouldings; another of the sixteenth century quite encrusted with carved wood; and here are the dirty little streets like crooked lanes, where old women, who all through the summer months, Sundays excepted, give their feet an air-bath, may be seen sitting on the doorsteps clutching with one bony ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... sell the statues, stairs, paintings, sculpture, which an Austrian decree had made inalienable! To live on a foundation of piles of campeachy wood worth nearly a million of francs, and have no furniture! To own sumptuous galleries, and live in an attic above the topmost arabesque cornice constructed of marble brought from the Morea—the land which a Memmius had marched over as conqueror in the time of the Romans! To see his ancestors in effigy on their tombs of precious marbles in ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... looking-glass in a gilt frame surmounted the mantelpiece, on which stood two or three little blue vases. Paper of a light colour and a large flowing arabesque pattern with a broad frieze covered the walls. There was not a single picture of any kind in the room, neither steel engraving, nor lithograph, nor chromo; and remembering what pictures usually are, even in the best of hotels, it was perhaps just as well ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the use of a template of any ornamental or other desired form, these portions will retain their ordinary appearance, and will show the form of the design very strongly outlined beside the crackled surface. In this manner, letters, arabesque, and other patterns in white or colored glass can be produced with great ease ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... persistency by Mariotte the cook, can be seen, as in the days when kings were as poor in 1200 as the du Guaisnics are in 1830, four old goblets, an ancient embossed soup-tureen, and two salt-cellars, all of silver; also many pewter plates and many pitchers of gray and blue pottery, bearing arabesque designs and the arms of the du Guaisnics, covered by hinged pewter lids. The chimney-piece is modernized. Its condition proves that the family has lived in this room for the last century. It is of carved stone in the style of the Louis XV. period, and is ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... she adored this mood of London: its nights of rain were sheer enchantment, arabesque, nights of secrecy and stealth, mystery, and romance under the rose. On nights such as this lovers prospered, adventures were to the venturesome, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... him through the strangest succession of rooms, full of curious barbaric splendour which impressed me as being very rich and wonderful, though perhaps I should think differently now. Gold and scarlet in arabesque designs gleamed upon the walls, with gilt dragons and monsters writhing along cornices and out of corners. Look where I would, on panel or ceiling, a score of mirrors flashed back the picture of the tall, proud, white-faced man, and the youth who walked so demurely ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... closely similar. Both scorned any element of interest or beauty which was not strictly plastic—the human body supported by architecture or by rough indications of the world we live in. Signorelli invented an intricate design for arabesque pilasters, one on each side of the door leading from his chapel into the Cathedral. They are painted en grisaille, and are composed exclusively of nudes, mostly male, perched or grouped in a marvellous variety of attitudes upon an ascending series of slender-stemmed ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds |
