"Filigree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place that was surrounded by the wings of the great castle but had no roof, and was filled with flowers and fountains and exquisite statuary and many settees and chairs of polished marble or filigree gold. Here there were gathered fifty beautiful young girls, Glinda's handmaids, who had been selected from all parts of the Land of Oz on account of their wit and beauty and sweet dispositions. It was a great honor to be made one ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... patterns embroidered about the collar and skirts, he wore a long gombaz of very dark green silk embossed with tambour work; his sash was of the plainest purple silk, and his sidriyeh or vest was of entire cloth of gold with gold filigree buttons: on the head a plain tarboosh, and in his hand sometimes a cane ornamented with ivory or a rosary of sandal-wood. His gold watch and chain were ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... over these old stories reminds me that I have something which may interest architects and perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While I was on it, "pinnacled dim in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... our pipes, and we three began to play all-fours and euchre, sometimes one pair, sometimes another. As for Mr. Knightley and Starlight, they got out a curious filigree sort of a little card-table and began to play some outlandish game that I didn't know, and to look ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... they stood amazed; for here the flutings ran up five hundred feet inside the stupendous central spire, among a marvelous filigree of windows which diminished toward the top—a lacework as of frost-patterns etched into the solid ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... when Creede and his cowboys came clattering down the mountain from the east and spurred across the redondo, whooping and yelling as they rounded up their stock. For half an hour they rode and hollered and swore, apparently oblivious of the filigree of sheep tracks with which the ground was stamped; then as the remuda quieted down they circled slowly around their captives, swinging their wide-looped ropes and waiting ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... remained empty, and at her little dressing-table at the foot, which, like all the rest, was ornamented with various girlish trifles, framed photographs being not the least conspicuous among them. Sue's table had a moderate show, two men in their filigree and velvet frames standing ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... was cruising in the Mediterranean with the Dorsets, but it had not occurred to him that there was any chance of running across her on the Riviera, where the season was virtually at an end. As he leaned back, silently contemplating his filigree cup of Turkish coffee, he was trying to put some order in his thoughts, to tell himself how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... they burn the dead, large bright fires might be seen, at which oxen were roasting. Anise-sprinkled loaves alternated with great cheeses heavier than discuses, crateras filled with wine, and cantharuses filled with water, together with baskets of gold filigree-work containing flowers. Every eye was dilated with the joy of being able at last to gorge at pleasure, and songs were beginning ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere feather-weight piece of native filigree work—almost too fragile to trust on the wrist—and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening, and after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by themselves—shooting, I think—my daughter, my ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the crowd to justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth. As he turned from this show Odo's eye was caught by a handsome girl who, on the arm of a dashing cavalier ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a necklace of blue and white beads that glistened like jewels in the sun, and from them hung a gorgeous filigree cross. "Didst thou ever see a sweeter thing than this?" said he; "and look, here is a comb that even the silversmith would swear was pure silver all the way through." Then, in a soft, wheedling voice, "Canst thou not let me in, my little bird? Sure there are other lasses besides thyself who would ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... making great progress this morning. Captain Wybrow sat opposite with a newspaper in his hand, from which he obligingly read extracts with an elaborately easy air, wilfully unconscious of the contemptuous silence with which she pursued her filigree work. At length he put down the paper, which he could no longer pretend not to have exhausted, and Miss Assher then said,—'You seem to be on very intimate terms with ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... shown to them, under proper regulations, and for a small fee. The Sword of State is a most beautiful piece of workmanship, a present from Pope Julius II. to James IV. The scabbard is richly decorated with filigree work of silver, double gilded, representing oak leaves and acorns, executed in {p.211} a taste worthy that classical age in which the arts revived. A draughtsman has been employed to make sketches of these articles, in order to be laid before ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and sometimes embroidered in gold thread with the most elegant objects from the animal or vegetable kingdoms. To that part which fell immediately behind the heels, there were attached thin plates of gold; or, by way of variety, it was studded with golden stars and filigree-work; sometimes with jewels ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Maisie; "you'd never tell one from the other, would you? Mine's a tiny bit heavier, don't you think? I've just found it in the soap-dish. I'll change this for a filigree pendant. All my life I've longed for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... was not walking. She was lying in a perambulator which was being pushed by a governess. With her head resting on an embroidered pillow in the shadow of the lowered hood, she resembled one of those little waxen images of saint or martyr, embellished with silver filigree, on whose wounds and gems the nuns of Spain are wont to pore in the ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... a high bronze door, in which a strange lacy design had been cut in filigree. A clear gong sounded, and the double doors opened part way. The Targa remained in the corridor, closing the ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers fabled,—no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... fingers seemed unable to unravel. English books, magazines, papers lay on tables, the latest music was stacked on a grand piano, great flowering plants filling the air with heavy scent stood in every corner, the pearls around her neck were worth a king's ransom, the sweetmeats on a filigree stand looked like uncut jewels; in fact everything a woman could want was there, and yet not enough to ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... an hour the lads sauntered on, interested in the people rather than the shops. They bought a few things. Jack invested in half a pound of Egyptian tobacco and a gaily-decorated pipe for his Uncle Ben, two little filigree brooches, and a couple of very large silk handkerchiefs of many colours, with knotted fringes, for his ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:- ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... keen, blue eyes in a background of perpetual fire. His large, swollen nose had a vinous tint, acquiring purplishness in cold weather. Tiny red veins, as numerous as the cracks in Satsuma-ware, spread across both cheeks in a carmine filigree. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... off the newspaper wrapping, disclosing a flat velvet box much rubbed and soiled. Touching a spring the lid flew open, disclosing a large cameo of rare and intricate workmanship, with a gold filigree border ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... as he left the stable, his work done. Beside the yard gate there stood a locust tree, and on a bough of this, midway up, for he never goes to the tree-tops at this season, David saw a cardinal. He was sitting with his breast toward the clear crimson sky; every twig around him silver filigree; the whole tree glittering with a million gems of rose and white, gold and green; and wherever a fork, there a hanging of snow. The bird's crest was shot up. He had come forth to look abroad upon this strange wreck of nature and peril to his kind. David had scarcely stopped ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... mounds contain the remains of the renowned beings, those ancient travelers. The Swedes, however, still cling to the belief that the bones of Wodin, the Alexander of the North, rest beneath the sod at Upsala. In these mounds have been found the bones of a woman and of a dog, a bracelet of filigree work, and a curious pin shaped like a bird, but no sign of Wodin's presence. Yet peasants believe that Wodin passes by on dark nights, and his horse's shoe, with eight nail-holes, is exhibited in ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... walls of filmy glittering webs. The long, delicate strands of gray moss which draped themselves from tree to tree and branch to branch were each one converted into threads of crystal, forming a filigree lacework, infinitely beautiful. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... the colouring of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green, the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of leafless trees.—This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and stimulated rather than merely soothed. To feel the harsh, untainted wind break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of the roadside and sturdy spires ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... next morning I called upon Count Dandini, the owner of the carriage, and as I passed a jeweller's shop I bought a pair of gold bracelets in Venetian filigree, each five yards long and of rare fineness. I intended them as a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... bride, was hidden in a large black-silk-hooded opera-cloak. Beneath the hood it was evident that her rebellious hair was bound up with red silk, and fastened by some device in her ears (unless she had them pierced, which was too dreadful a thing to suppose!) were long brass filigree earrings. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... five dollars you borrowed ten years ago, an' you never caught a half pound perch in yo' life that you didn't tell us the nex' day it was a fo' pound trout. So set down. Oh, I'm tellin' the truth without any filigree, Dave." ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... with their Oriental manufactures of all colours; the Khan Khalili, wherein the Persian, Spanish, Jewish, and Turkish merchants offer for sale their stock of jewels, silks, brass-work, etc.; the silver bazaar, where the finest filigree work is pressed upon prospective buyers. He brushed shoulders with shoe-sellers, the pistachio-sellers, and the water-carriers, who assure all who choose to listen that theirs is "Water sweet as honey! Water from the spring!" and in a commanding voice ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... particularly a flat band in the form of a pilaster, enriched with losenges, which is attached to the front of one of the columns, and is continued over the roof, and again down the pillar on the opposite side. Mr. Turner noticed a small gallery, or pulpit, of elegant filigree stone-work, at the west end, near the roof;[188] and, upon the authority of the well-known antiquary, John Carter, he supposed it most probably intended to receive a band of singers on high festivals. But some corresponding erections in England would make it seem more likely that this gallery communicated ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... opened her box next, and found a heart-shaped filigree gold brooch of great beauty. The Maynards had sent her this, not only as a valentine, but as a token of gratitude ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... vases, but pervaded the hall with one under each arm. The other gentlemen speculated with equal rashness in all sorts of frail trifles, and wandered helplessly about afterward, burdened with wax flowers, painted fans, filigree portfolios, and other ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... slippers, or change money, or are ready for anything in the shape of barter. Seated in the shade of that small niche in the wall, as on a tailor's shop-board, is an adool, or public notary, selling advice to a client; in the alcove next him is a worker in beads and filigree; from a dusty forge beyond comes the clang of anvils, where half-naked smiths are hammering out bits or fashioning horse-shoes. Mules with Bedouins perched, chin on shin, amid the bales of merchandise on their ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... rose as one man. And was it not in Macedonia at the gold mines of Pangaetus that another bloody uprising took place at vast cost to the gold industry because they rose as a man? Suppose you, that the silversmiths, gold-gilders, pearl and ivory and filigree workers should secretly band themselves together, hast thou knowledge to compute the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... fifty feet in length and twenty or thirty feet out of the water. It was a glittering island, with savage peaks, deep valleys, bluffs, and promontories. The edges were delicately frilled and resembled silver filigree. Some of these, which were transparent and as daintily turned as old Venetian glass, dripped continually like rain-beaten eaves. The portion nearest the water's edge was honeycombed by the wavelets that dashed upon it without ceasing, rushing in and ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... adding another "te-eet" by way of special emphasis and adornment. Oh, the sweet little piper piping only for Pan! The loneliness of the place was accentuated by the sad cadenzas of the mountain hermit thrushes. Swallows of some kind—cliff-swallows, no doubt—were silently weaving invisible filigree across the sky above the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... filled a shelf above her escritoire, and between the candlesticks was a photograph in a filigree silver frame. Towards this she looked every now and then, in the pauses of her writing, with a happy, trustful expression of quiet love. During one pause she noticed that her little clock pointed to 8.30. 'Jim will just be going on,' she said to herself. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... over, a small case-bottle of brandy, in a curious frame of silver filigree, circulated to the guests. I had already taken a small glass of the liquor, and, when it had passed to Mabel and to Cristal and was again returned to the upper end of the table, I could not help taking the bottle in my hand, to look more at the armorial bearings which were ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... inscribed in enamelled letters the best wish—"joy be with you"—that a newly-married couple would command. The same words are inscribed in more richly-designed letters on the curve of the second ring. Both are of gold, richly chased, enamelled, and enriched by filigree work, and are sufficiently stately ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... as certain filibusters then generally adopt when on shore. He wears a waistcoat of rich maroon velvet, with buttons of filigree gold; large Flemish boots of like material and ornamented with the same style of button, which extend the length of the thigh, being met by a belt of orange silk, in which is stuck a poignard richly chased; and, finally, long leggings of white kid embroidered ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... received on her return to Bayonne with sovereign honours. The magistrates of the town went, on one occasion, to meet her with offerings of fruit, flowers, expensive wines, hams, and game, all in silver filigree baskets, beautifully worked. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... own room, there stood on her dressing-table a long silver-paper and filigree box. Wondering, she raised the lid, to be met with a gust of exquisite perfume and confronted with a mass of frail yellow roses, lovely with the quaint, virginal beauty of suggestion that separates ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... dwelt on New York's stateliest avenue, in a big brown-stone palace that was like a palace in an Eastern story, with its velvet carpets, its arabesques, its filigree work, its chairs, and tables, and sofas touched up and inlaid with gold, and cushioned in silks of ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... of filigree gold. Round her neck was a massive gold chain. On her fingers sparkled several rings of price—diamonds, rubies and opals. In figure her ladyship was tall, and upright as a dart. She was, however, slightly ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... hazily remembered transition, and they were at dinner—where each plate was of two almost imperceptible layers of solid diamond between which was curiously worked a filigree of emerald design, a shaving sliced from green air. Music, plangent and unobtrusive, drifted down through far corridors—his chair, feathered and curved insidiously to his back, seemed to engulf and overpower him as he drank his ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. But who would hesitate to give up a part of what the Greeks have bequeathed us rather than lose the marvellous filigree in clay of "Henri Deux," the rich realism of Palissy or the wild and delightful riot of line and color and unequalled delicacy of manipulation presented to us by the Japanese? One and the same eye, as highly and soundly educated as you please, may be charmed almost equally by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... still day of frost; the sky was arched above him, across the high hills, like that terrible crystal which is the vault above which sits God—hard blue from horizon to horizon; the fringe of feathery birches stood like filigree-work above him on his left; on his right ran the Derwent, sucking softly among his sedges; on this side and that lay the flat bottom through which he went—meadowland broken by rushes; his mare Cecily ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste-board, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Turque was served in small cups with their silver filigree undercup, and Turkish paste flavored with attar of roses, and nauseatingly sweet, was passed about, with a glass of water to wash it down. Also cigarettes of every description were lavishly strewn on all the little tables, and hovering about us all the time were the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... steeped the verdant sod, The moon-rays shimmered o'er the spangled lea, And taught the soul the eloquence of God, Tinging the far horizon o'er the sea With silver film and sheeny filigree, While o'er the gray expanse with trembling wing The ling'ring zephyr hovered sleepily, And faintly breathed o'er every dormant thing Its soft, sad benediction. This did ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... end, but it was as desperately out of the perpendicular as are the billiard cues of '49 that one finds yet in service in the ancient mining camps of California. The muzzle was eaten by the rust of centuries into a ragged filigree-work, like the end of a burnt-out stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within—it was flaked with iron rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed the ponderous pistols and snapped them. They were rusty inside, too—had not been loaded for a generation. I went back, full of encouragement, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... silk and a fur pelisse, her train held by two negro female slaves, received us at the head of the stairs and ushered us into a large room with a divan round three sides of it. Sweetmeats and water and pipes and coffee were brought as usual, some of the cups and their filigree stands very handsome. We went out to see the town, preceded by a tall black slave in a gorgeous blue velvet jacket, with a great silver stick in his hand. Under his guidance we visited the khans, the bazaar, and the mosque; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Clare ought to wear fine lace. The intricate, gauzy web would harmonize with her delicate beauty, but the trouble was that he was no judge of the material. A little farther on, a case of silver filigree caught his eye and he turned over some of the articles. This was work he knew more about, and it was almost as light and fine as the lace. The design was good and marked by a fantastic Eastern grace, for it had come from the Canaries and ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... a kind of Veil, expanded by Ropes from one side of the Parapet-wall, or Lattice of the Flat Roof, to the other. So into a little Cloister running round this Court, and up a little winding stone Staircase into another Cloister or Upper Gallery. Then at a Door all covered with rich Filigree-work in Gold and Colours did the Negress knock; and by and by a soft silvery Voice, of which the sound, somehow, made me start and tremble much more than that of the Old Knight of Malta had done, said a few words in Arabic, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... At no house was there less parade. The appearance of the table changed as if by the waving of a wand, and silently as a dream. And at this moment, the dessert being arranged, fruits and their beautiful companions, flowers, reposed in alabaster baskets raised on silver stands of filigree work. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... years ago. He exhibited it at a meeting in London of the Archæological Institute, in November, 1882, where it was described as a “beautiful knife handle, decorated with nielli of Italian character.” It is of blue enamel, beautifully chased with an elegant filigree pattern in silver. It has also been pronounced by an authority to be Byzantine work. As being found near the ruins of Kirkstead Abbey, we might well imagine it to have hung at the girdle, or from the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the woods and fields of the Eastern Shore. Instinctively I paused at the dressing-room door. Nay, my dears, you need not cry out, such was the custom of the times. A dainty bower it was, filled with the perfume of flowers, and rosy cupids disporting on the ceiling; and china and silver and gold filigree strewn about, with my tea-cups on the table. The sunlight fell like a halo round Dorothy's head, her hands strayed over the keys, and her eyes were far away. She had not heard me. I remember her dress,—a silk with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... back, "Prince" Louis Napoleon was stated to be in possesion of the talisman of Charlemagne;—"a small nut, in a gold filigree envelopment, found round the neck of that monarch on the opening of his tomb, and given by the town of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) to Buonaparte, and by him to his favourite Hortense, ci-de-vant Queen of Holland, at whose death it descended to her son," the present President of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... none might venture to guess. An artless admiration of the absent Miss Justine's photographed charms, caused a faint glow to flicker upon the ancient maiden's cheek. When Alan Hawke drew forth a hideous carbuncle and Indian filigree bracelet (an old relic of bazaar haunting), the thin lips of the preceptress ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... forehead and shoulders, and one fancied one could see her fat body floating about in an enormous dressing-gown covered with spots of dirt and grease. Round her neck she wore a great gilt necklace, and on her wrists were splendid bracelets of Genoa filigree work. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... picture as nearly as I can draw it: a round table with a low centerpiece of orchids in lavenders and pink, old silver candlesticks with filigree shades against the somber wainscoting; nine people, two of them unhappy—Jim and I; one of them complacent—Aunt Selina; one puzzled—Mr. Harbison; and the rest hysterically mirthful. Add one sick Japanese butler and grind in the mills ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... violent crimson of bougainvillaea, or fringed with tassels of wistaria, loop on loop of amethysts. High above these windows, which framed flowery pictures, were other windows, little and jewelled, mere plaques of filigree workmanship, fine as carved ivory or silver lace, and lined with coloured glass of delicate tints—gold, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of antique Venetian point lace, presented by another brother-in-law, Don Alfonso of Spain, the younger brother of the Pretender Don Carlos, while on a huge square writing-table, the equipments of which are of Oriental gold filigree-work, richly jewelled, are usually found letters either to or from the favorite brother-in-law of the archduchess, Duke Charles-Theodore of Bavaria, the celebrated oculist, who during the course of his practice has performed more than three thousand ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;[200] you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... honestly on your legs. Have faith in yourself; pick these men's brains, and all men's. You can do it. Say to yourself boldly, as the false prophet in India said to the missionary, "I have fire enough in my stomach to burn up" a dozen stucco and filigree reformers and "assimilate their ashes into the bargain, like ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... which has perfumed his whole existence, since, as a child, he had felt it graft itself upon the 'blue filigree of his soul.' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the city moves away from the little stone boxes. Automobiles and trees appear. Here begin the ornaments. Marble, bronze, carved and painted brick—a filigree and a scrollwork—put forth claims. The lords of the city stand girthed in ornaments. Knight and satrap have changed somewhat. Moat and battlement grimace but faintly from behind their ornaments. The tick-tock ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... glory of silks and satins that I blinked my eyes before her dazzlements. What made it worse was that there was a comb—as she called it, though I should in my ignorance have thought it some rich and rare work in filigree belonging to an empress—which, owing to the smallness of her mirror and the poor light, she could not get to sit perfectly in its golden cushion, and I was bidden to put it where and as it ought to be. I was a long time over the task, in ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... sigh of relief when Gaston came in bringing a little tray with two filigree-cased cups ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... of life that ever I had anything to do with," replied Jacky, with a certain wave of the head, peculiar to sensible women, "had something to show before her age. Bella had worked the globe long before she was sixteen; and Baby did her filigree tea-caddy the first quarter she was at Miss Macgowk's," glancing with triumph from the one which hung over the mantelpiece, to the other which stood on the tea-table, shrouded ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and the fourth of Moussa's. The Leading Gentleman, who was as rich as he was ragged and dirty, wore a very beautiful knife, which (though it reposed in a gaudy sheath of yellow, green and blue beads, fringed with a dependent filigree, or lace work, of similar beads with tassels of cowrie-shells) hailed from Damascus and had a handle of ivory and gold, and an inlaid blade on which were inscribed verses ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... like a fiddle, and Nat can find her a beau,' continued the sailor, with a laugh, as he undid a dainty filigree brooch in ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... pretty," he apologised, with blacksmith sturdiness, "—not making horseshoes, but cutting out delicate things, ornamental iron work for aesthetic purposes, and all that ... all you'll have to do will be to swing the hammer gently, while I direct the blows and cut put the dainty filigree the "Master" sells ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... does he urge upon the wise and patriotic State legislatures? Why, a series of flimsy restrictions, which would have about as much effect in preventing the tremendous abuses of banking which he himself depicts, as a bit of filigree iron-work would have in restraining the expansion of steam. Restrictions! restrictions! toujours restrictions!—as if that method of correcting the evil had not been utterly exploded by nearly two centuries of experience! Mr. Buchanan calls himself a Democrat; he is loud ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... dressed for dinner) to his red and massive countenance surmounted by two horn-like tufts of carroty hair, informed me at a glance. Followed Mrs. A.-S., the British matron incarnate. Literally there seemed to be acres of her; black silk below and white skin above on which set in filigree floated big green stones, like islands in an ocean. Her countenance too, though stupid was very stern and frightened me. Followed the progeny of this formidable pair. They were tall and thin, also red haired. The girls, whose age I could ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... household in the journey upon which those poor folks were bound. What stolen goods were finally discovered when the family reached foreign parts were found in Mrs. Mackenzie's trunks, not in her daughter's: a silver filigree basket, a few teaspoons, baby's gold coral, and a costly crimson velvet-bound copy of the Hon. Miss Grimstone's Church Service, to which articles, having thus appropriated them, Mrs. Mackenzie henceforward laid claim ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consists of the following parts. A close waistcoat, without sleeves, but having a neck like a shirt, buttoned close up to the top, with buttons, often of gold filigree. This is peculiar to the Malays. Over this they wear the baju, which resembles a morning gown, open at the neck, but generally fastened close at the wrists and halfway up the arm, with nine buttons to each sleeve. The sleeves, however, are often wide ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Christmas tree had been cut down, and was brought into the library. As soon as it was set up, the work of decoration began, and it was hung with strings of popcorn, and tinsel filigree which Mrs. Warner had saved from previous Christmas trees. Dozens of candles too, were put on the branches, to be ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... at the outer seam, showing thin white drawers, which puffed prettily between the slashes. A gentleman in Los Angeles still has the trimmings for such suit, consisting of three hundred and fifty pieces of silver filigree work. ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... Lady Rayne's bedwoman, speedily appeared, and mistress and maid fell into earnest converse. Issa, as in duty bound, listened; then her attention seemed to flag again. She bent over the open pack and picked up a chain of filigree work. It was beautifully fashioned and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Chamberlain, "is poetry! this flimsy manufacture of the brain, which in comparison with the lofty and durable monuments of genius is as the gold filigree-work of Zamara beside the eternal architecture of Egypt!" After this gorgeous sentence, which, with a few more of the same kind, FADLADEEN kept by him for rare and important occasions, he proceeded to the anatomy of the short poem just recited. The lax and easy kind of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... take everything on trust. For instance, if we read on one page of some history (every history of music has such a page) that Mozart's sonatas are sublime, that they do not contain one note of mere filigree work, and that they far transcend anything written for the harpsichord or clavichord by Haydn or his contemporaries, we echo the saying, and, if necessary, quote the "authorities." Now if one had occasion to read over some of the clavichord ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... is out," he said, as he conducted me into a reception room. The walls were hung with seal-brown draperies. There were richly upholstered chairs and a divan piled high with fluffy pillows. In one corner stood a bookcase of burnished metal filigree. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting-cards ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on—sound like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, passing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved and writhed, so that we ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Road deals with. An instance of this comes vividly to mind in connection with the Wiccopee Pass and the plain south of Fishkill. As I first saw it of a perfect June evening, it was as delicately beautiful as a bit of silver filigree, but another time, in September, the mist hung low on the mountains. It was either raining, or had just stopped, or was about to begin again, and it had been doing that or worse all day and the day before, and that ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... seemed made expressly for her light gloves, her ivory opera-glass, and her spangled fan. The tawdry glitter of the theatre, the red and gold of the hangings, were genuine splendor to her. She bloomed among them like a pretty paper flower in a filigree jardiniere. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... picturesque look to the little city in the sea. The sight of such a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged for the most part amphitheatre-wise above a picturesque harbour, and crowned by a glorious cathedral front with triple-arched Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and filigree spires, is a spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on earth. Religion towering above daily life, to put men continually in mind of the End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish conception. But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... rouges, banderolles, ca iras, carmagnoles, fraternisations, accolades; the properties, as well as the text of the plays, borrowed from Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:—"To-day, pasteboard and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." Tigre-singe, Voltaire's epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... meeting her American acquaintance, or of making acquaintance with such Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood, in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these accumulations. She was constantly changing about, ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... indeed, a delicious morning. As she passed out through the iron gate the trees overhead, still with a few brown belated leaves, soared up in filigree of exquisite workmanship into a sky of clear November blue, as fresh as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The genial sound of cock-crowing rose, silver and exultant, from the farm beyond the road, and the tiny street of the hamlet looked as clean ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... district in S. of Bengal, at the apex of the delta formed by the Mahanuddy; noted for its gold and silver filigree work. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... under a table might have been set for a temperance picnic, completely overgrown with wild grape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way are mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to precede ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... see her, in the loose white morning-gown folded in plaits about the swelling bosom, her slender waist clasped by a flowing blue sash, the dark brown satin bands of her hair confined by a large gold filigree pin, and half concealed by a jaunty little French cap, with the ribbons floating about her pear-shaped ears; and while her soft, dark hazel eyes were bent eagerly toward the solid old skipper, her round, rosy, dimpled fingers clasped a miniature locket ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... thought you?— Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?— 'God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour, To lust of His mind:- Thou could'st ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... to win you there is not a precious stone I would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones—diamonds, white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine fingers. Red roses for your hair—every petal a hollowed ruby. Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds. Know, too, Miss Dobson, that ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... ranged round, each in its crystal ewer, And fruits, and date-bread loaves closed the repast, And Mocha's berry, from Arabia pure, In small fine China cups, came in at last; Gold cups of filigree, made to secure The hand from burning, underneath them placed; Cloves, cinnamon, and saffron too were boiled Up with the coffee, which (I think) ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... distance, they are very slovenly in their hair and dress on closer acquaintance, and generally exhibit the traces of their Oriental origin. They are great experts in the making of Maltese lace, for which they have won a world-wide reputation, and their native filigree work is also very famous and very beautiful. Churches (where weddings are celebrated in the evening) are very numerous, and priests and friars are always to be seen in the streets. The boys of our regiment said that Malta was chiefly notable for "yells, ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... the earth seems with diamonds today, Gemming all nature in blazing array; A picture more fairy-like never could be Than this wonderful icicle filigree. ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... embroidered with gold. About her ankles were redeefs, or bangles of emeralds, pierced, and strung on common string. At her wrists hung a multitude of bangles, and on her bare left arm, near the shoulder, was a gold wire that pinched the flesh, and from it hung a filigree medallion that covered her crest, tattooed beneath the skin. It is always so with the tribe of ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... 1 papier-mache work-box, and 5 fitted up 1 morocco work-bag, ornamented 3 with bright steel; fitted up with scissors, thimble, etc 1 lady's Russia leather 15 shopping-bag, with silver and gilt clasps for chain and key 1 18-karat gold filigree 20 card-case 1 set gold whist-markers, in 50 hands on little box, a present unto her 1 lady's small work-bag, silk 5 fittings 1 solid silver porte-monnaie 19 1 little blue porte-monnaie; 3 velvet, and cords and tassel 1 ladies' companion, with fixings ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... sleeves, patches where the groundwork of the garment disappeared under the complications of the arabesques. It was no longer pink embroidered with silver, but silver embroidered with pink. So loaded were the shoulders with twist, filigree, knots and ornaments of all kinds, that the arms seemed to issue from two crushed crowns. The satin hose, braided and spangled on the seams, were admirably adjusted to limbs combining power and elegance. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... seated. They were evidently persons of consequence: large bulky men wrapped in fresh muslins and reclining side by side on muslin-covered divans and cushions. Black slaves had placed before them brass trays with pots of mint-tea, glasses in filigree stands, and dishes of gazelles' horns and sugar-plums, and they sat serenely absorbing these refreshments and gazing with large calm eyes upon the motionless water ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be got,—lace, you know, and filigree-work ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... decorated organ-pipes. From parapets of porphyry hang gold stalactites, side by side with icicles of silver. Moreover, all its marvelous fretwork is distinctly visible, for the light film of water pulsates over it so delicately that it can no more hide the filigree beneath than a thin veil conceals ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard |
