"Mother-of-pearl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the only article on which the English smoker prided himself. It was made of various materials—wood, bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and silver: and the forms which it assumed were exceedingly diversified. Out of a collection of upwards of thirty tobacco-stoppers of different ages, from 1688 to the present time, the following are the most remarkable: a bear's tooth tipped with silver at the bottom, and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the lady to see where she kept the sweet things; and began hiding, and sneaking, and following her about, and pretending to be looking the other way, or going after something else, till he found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away in a deep crack ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... went to the house, which stood close at hand, with its low gable toward him. Late summer still lorded it in the land; only a few fleecy clouds shared the blue of the sky with the ripening sun, and on the hot ridges the air pulsed and trembled, like vaporized layers of mother-of-pearl. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... of fire-opal; the wonderful translucent blue of the sky shaded suddenly to deep purple lanced by great shafts of mauve and amethyst light, and in the east stars popped out; the hills shone like huge, crude gems—sapphire, jade, jasper, malachite, chalcedony—their valleys swimming with mists of mother-of-pearl.... And it was night, the hills dark and still, the sky a deeper purple and opaque, the ruddy fires of wayfarers on the ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... received his first, next the queen-mother, then Monsieur, then the queen and Madame, and so on. After this, Anne of Austria opened a small Spanish leather bag, containing two hundred numbers engraved upon small balls of mother-of-pearl, and presented the open sack to the youngest of her maids of honor, for the purpose of taking one of the balls out of it. The eager expectation, amid all these tediously slow preparations, was rather that of avidity than of curiosity. Saint-Aignan bent ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... time was on matters concerning Gladys Ferguson and the Ferguson family. When you are washing dishes in the sink of the Yellow House in Beulah it is very irritating to hear of Gladys Ferguson's mother-of-pearl opera glasses, her French maid, her breakfast on a tray in bed, her diamond ring, her photograph in the Sunday "Times," her travels abroad, her ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... surprise her colour rose, reluctantly and duskily. She looked down at the mother-of-pearl opera-glass in her smoothly gloved hands, and said, after a pause: "What do you do while ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... square vertical shaft supporting a canopy, with a minaret or pinnacle surmounted by a rich gold and jewelled finial. The entire height of the throne is nine or ten feet. The materials are precious woods, ebony, sandal-wood, etc., with shell, mother-of-pearl, silver, and gold. ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... so vast that the owners cannot trust even the strong hand of the Government to protect them, but take refuge in the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and Minton tiles and mother-of-pearl, I do not see why Jukes's tale should not be true. He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans and distances and things of that kind, and he certainly would not take the trouble to invent imaginary traps. He could earn more by doing his legitimate ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... enormous bed, like a magnificent bier, with a brocade cover. Boris could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such a catafalque. Under the baldachin hovered a gilded Cupid, spotted and faded, with his arrow aimed at the bed. In the corners stood carved cupboards, damascened with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Veroshka opened a press and put her little face inside, and a musty, dusty smell came from the shelves, laden with old-fashioned caftans and embroidered ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... has ever been one of the secrets of my success as a propagandist. Like pictures, they impress the mind of the hearer with a vivid sense of reality. "Every one knows the exquisite iridiscence of mother-of-pearl, the tender, delicate hues which melt into each other, glowing with soft radiance. How different is the dull, dead surface of a piece of wax. Yet take that dull, black wax and mould it so closely to the surface of the mother-of-pearl that it shall ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... went towards the water, the other would lead him back to camp. Once or twice Dol got away from the trail, but he quickly found it again; and in due time emerged from the forest twilight into the broad glare of the sun, to see Squaw Pond lying before him like a miniature mother-of-pearl sea, so protected by its evergreen woods that scarcely a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... entered, I could not help being impressed by the wealth of articles in beautiful cloisonne enamel, in mother-of-pearl, lacquer, and champleve. There were beautiful little koros, or incense burners, vases, and teapots. There were enamels incrusted, translucent, and painted, works of the famous Namikawa, of Kyoto, and Namikawa, of Tokyo. Satsuma vases, splendid and rare ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... had broad-water patches, in and out, inlaid on land, like mother-of-pearl in brown Shittim wood. To a wild duck, born and bred there, it would almost be a puzzle to find her own nest amongst us; what chance then had I and Kickums, both unused to marsh and mere? Each time when we thought that ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... be more generous than I," said the other fairy; then, taking a rush from the only chair in the room, she blew upon it, when, lo! the rush instantly swelled, and in less time than it takes to tell it became a beautiful musket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A second rush produced a cartridge-box, which Graceful slung around his body and which became him marvelously. One would have thought him a prince setting out for the chase; he was so handsome that his grandmother ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... her feelings, her attention was attracted by a pair of scrolls of black lacquer, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, suspended on the pillars, and she asked Hsiang-yn to tell ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... captain, who was standing with the boatswain at his elbow. He was a spare, energetic-looking man, of about forty years of age, with thick black whiskers, marked features, and rather hollow cheeks, and with carefully dressed, glossy hair. He was smoking a handsome pipe with a long stem inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and took a sip from time to time from a cup of black coffee that was standing on ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... little woman's business in life to purchase! What etageres, and bonbonnieres, and chiffonnieres! What awfully bad pastels there were on the walls! What frightful Boucher and Lancret shepherds and shepherdesses leered over the portieres! What velvet-bound volumes, mother-of-pearl albums, inkstands representing beasts of the field, prie-dieu chairs, and wonderful knick-knacks I can recollect! There was the most magnificent piano, though Rosey seldom sang any of her six songs now; and when she ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would greet her in a sugary voice; but elsewhere Olive was tremendously admired, there were always men about her, serenades rising from the lawn beneath her window, and Laurel herself had seen Olive's dressing table laden with bouquets in frilly lace paper. She had one now, in a holder of mother-of-pearl, with a gilt chain and ring. Her wide skirt was a mass of over-drapery, knots of moss roses and green gauze ribbons; while a silver cord ending in a tassel fell forward among ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Recently, however, crystalline paraffine has been obtained from ozokerite by dissolving the latter in warm amyl alcohol; on cooling the greater part separates out in crystals having the luster of mother-of-pearl. By repetition of this process, a substance is obtained that is scarcely to be distinguished from the paraffine obtained by distillation. Apparently there exists then in ozokerite, together with paraffine, other substances not capable of crystallization which keep the paraffine from crystallizing. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... an hour the coach was back. The Fairy, who was waiting at the door of the house, lifted the poor little Marionette in her arms, took him to a dainty room with mother-of-pearl walls, put him to bed, and sent immediately for the most famous doctors of the neighborhood to ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... N. semitransparency, translucency, semiopacity; opalescence, milkiness, pearliness[obs3]; gauze, muslin; film; mica, mother-of-pearl, nacre; mist &c. (cloud) 353. [opalescent jewel] opal. turbidity &c. 426a. Adj. semitransparent, translucent, semipellucid[obs3], semidiaphanous[obs3], semiopacous[obs3], semiopaque; opalescent, opaline[obs3]; pearly, milky; frosted, nacreous. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... originated the present commercial product, but who probably borrowed the original idea from the Chinese, call to their assistance the pearl oyster itself. The oysters are gently opened, small hemispherical discs of mother-of-pearl are introduced between shell and mantle and the oyster replanted. The foreign material is coated by the oyster with true pearly layers as usual, and after several years a sufficiently thick accumulation of pearly layers is thus deposited on the nucleus so that the oyster may be ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... been used with pleasing effect to exhibit the various forms of shells. The process of making pearl buttons and numerous articles made of mother-of-pearl add largely to the charms of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... offered his arm. On reaching Ada, she lightly touched her on the shoulder, white as mother-of-pearl, with her fan, and when the lady, somewhat surprised, turned, Frau von Jagerfeld, smiling pleasantly, said: "My dear child, let me present to you our best friend, Dr. Bergmann. I must devote myself to the rest of my guests, and, unfortunately, have not time to tell you all the good I think of ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Giant wooed the beautiful giantess who dwells in the Great River and won her love. He built for her a wonderful palace where the Great River runs into the sea. It was made of mother-of-pearl with rich carvings, and gold and silver and precious stones were used to adorn it. Never before in all the world had a giant or giantess possessed ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... wearing of charms. But there is also the utilitarian view, and a new form of charm will sometimes become popular, just as a new sanctuary becomes popular, because it is reported to have been effective in some particular case. Probably no change of fashion will ever banish horns made of coral or mother-of-pearl; being pointed, they are supposed to attract and break up the evil glance as a lightning conductor is supposed to attract and break up ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... noise made by a stone falling into a well. The young woman nervously pressed my hand, as if she were trying to avoid a precipice, and shivered when that man, at whom she happened to be looking, turned upon her two lifeless, sea-green eyes, which could be compared to nothing save tarnished mother-of-pearl. ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... hazy. The gray-green of the foliage on the mountains had a purple tinge in the early morning light, and the sea took on a mother-of-pearl gleam behind its amethyst, as it reflected the changing hues of the roseate sunrise. Over San Antonio and San Jacinto the sun rose gloriously, and in the freshness of the morning air the giant flying-fish of the Pacific leaped and gleamed across ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... appearance, we were not well-disposed to do. Probably they supposed we possessed fire-arms, and were therefore unwilling to approach nearer. They had just landed, we knew, from seeing two long, low canoes with high stems and sterns rudely carved and surmounted by plumes of feathers. A row of mother-of-pearl shells apparently ornamented each side of the gunwale. The men were armed with bows and arrows and huge clubs. Some of them also had spears in their hands, but we saw no guns among them. This was satisfactory. However, from their ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... surprised to observe, though not a more grand, a far more elegant room than he had ever seen in England. It was an octagon, about twenty feet square, and fifteen or sixteen high, having one window (the sides of it inlaid throughout with mother-of-pearl) reaching from the top of the room to the bottom: the ceiling, sides and furniture of the room were equally elegant." It was here that two of the greatest members of their respective legislatures—Charles Fox and Henry Grattan—first met in 1777, and Moira House continued to be the scene of splendid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... else—and then he made us look at the Bay of Naples. He said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but I think it's more. And he led us all into the ready-made library to see a poem Edith had taken a prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold letters and framed in mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple and wistful and nice—he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She was modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then, after a while, Mrs. Roscoe ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full half-way to the ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate, that Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... was made of ten thousand pieces of gold, mother-of-pearl, and woods of various hues. Look at the robes of that period: what embroidery, what delicacy of material, how many colors! And the bronze swords, the brooches, bracelets, earrings and implements of tillage and crafts of various descriptions. All these were made in ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Northern Flanders they had their own encampment, conducted in their own native style. They looked after their horses with as much care as a fond mother does her child. The harness and trappings were magnificently decorated with beautiful designs in mother-of-pearl and gold, and the men, when astride their horses and garbed in their long flowing white burnouses, looked the very personification of dignity. The Chief never handles a rifle, it would be beneath ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... in memory with that delectable meal; and to this day I cannot taste the flavour of guava but I find myself back in Captain Coffin's sitting-room, cutting a third slice from the wheaten loaf, with the corals and shells of mother-of-pearl winking at me from among the china on the dresser, and Captain Coffin seated opposite, with the silver rings in his ears, and his eyes very white in the dusk and distinct within ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... word Edith darted to a closet, opened a trunk, and from its depths drew forth a beautiful casket inlaid with mother-of-pearl ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... more like scenes of enchantment pencilled by a poet's fancy, than anything perhaps before displayed in a domestic habitation. Escritoires of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and rich caskets for antique gems, exquisitely enamelled and adorned with onyx, opals, rubies, and emeralds; cabinets of ivory, curiously wrought; mosaic tables, set with jasper, blood-stone, and lapis-lazuli, their feet carved into the claws of lions and eagles; screens ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... crept out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin coverlet, and the oldest and ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... small family businesses that produce textiles, soap, olive-wood carvings, and mother-of-pearl souvenirs; the Israelis have established some small-scale modern ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... behind the chariot of Hera, ready to do the bidding of her royal mistress. She appears under the form of a slender maiden of great beauty, robed in an airy fabric of variegated hues, resembling mother-of-pearl; her sandals are bright as burnished silver, she has golden wings, and wherever she appears, a radiance of light, and a sweet odour, as of delicate spring ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... tiny table of mother-of-pearl was brought, and on it some exquisite little striped porcelain cups, standing not in saucers, but in silver filigree cups into which they exactly fitted. Lucy remembered her Chinese experience, and did not ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fellow-creature—and that a woman!) went into the front room as he had been bidden. On one of the family of chairs, in a corner, was a black octagonal case. He opened this case, which was not locked, and drew from it a concertina, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Then he went to the desk, and from under a pile of rent books he extracted several pieces of music, and selected one. This selected piece he reared up on the mantelpiece against two brass candlesticks. It was obvious, from the certainty and ease of his movements, that he had ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... away to a point the bees dropped off by their own weight into the grass below, then rose again and either flew aloft in wide and circling flight or rushed headlong upon the swarm once more. Across the iridescent cluster passed a gleam and glow of peacock and iris, opal and mother-of-pearl; while from its heart ascended a deep murmur, telling of tremendous and accumulated energy suddenly launched into this peaceful glade of apple-blossom and ambient green. The frenzy of the moment held all that little ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... turtle-shell and brass curly-wurlies, plates of different kinds of money, and stacks of different kinds of plates. There was a beautiful picture of a little girl washing a dog, which Jane liked very much. And in the middle of the window there was a dirty silver tray full of mother-of-pearl card counters, old seals, paste buckles, snuff-boxes, and all sorts of ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... at Torcello, retains the bishop's throne and the bench for the presbyters apparently unaltered. The mosaics are singularly gorgeous, and the apse walls, as at Torcello, are inlaid with rich marble and mother-of-pearl. The dimensions are small—121 ft. by 32 ft. (See Kunstdenkmale des oesterreichischen Kaiserreichs, by Dr G. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... arch, while Merla followed just behind them, escorting Cap'n Bill. They now entered an apartment so gorgeous that the child fairly gasped with astonishment. The queen's throne room was indeed the grandest and most beautiful chamber in all the ocean palaces. Its coral walls were thickly inlaid with mother-of-pearl, exquisitely shaded and made into borders and floral decorations. In the corners were cabinets, upon the shelves of which many curious shells were arranged, all beautifully polished. The floor glittered with gems arranged in patterns of flowers, ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... not know which to prefer—her bright, silky hair, or her slightly restrousse nose, with its vibrating nostrils, her red lips, which looked as alluring as a ripe peach, her beautiful shoulders, her delicate ears, which resembled mother-of-pearl, or her slim waist and rounded figure, which would have delighted ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... verses, published—there is no occasion to say when. It is full of costliest engravings—large, skillful, appallingly laborious; dotted into textures like the dust on a lily leaf,—smoothed through gradations like clouds,—graved to surfaces like mother-of-pearl; and by all this toil there is set forth for the delight of Englishwomen, a series of the basest dreams that ungoverned feminine imagination can coin in sickliest indolence,—ball-room amours, combats of curled knights, pilgrimages of disguised ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Wilkinson, very thick and massive in the lower part of the frame, which terminated sometimes in a large and solid female head. From the two-stringed bow to these huge twelve-stringed Egyptian harps, six feet high and beautifully finished with veneer, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, no one can say how many centuries elapsed. The catgut strings of the harps of three thousand years ago are still capable of giving a musical sound. The best workmen of the present time, we are assured, could not finish a harp more exquisitely than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... of the city, they stared in amazement. It was made of silver and mother-of-pearl. In the center was carved the figure of the Lady of the Lake, with her arms outstretched in the form of a cross. In one hand she held a sword, and in the other a censer. On both sides of her figure was carved the story of the wars of King ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... glory of the moon! That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped of their linens; Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them. They shudder and grow faint. And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody, That Life, like a drunken player, Strikes out of their clear white bodies As out of ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... incomparable effulgence of those pure sapphires which light up the entrance to the nave. Her slight form is diffused in a clear robe of flame, striped and ribbed like the drapery of the so-called Berthe. Her face is white like mother-of-pearl, and her hair, a circular tissue of sunshine, radiates in threads of gold. She is the Bride of Canticles. Pulchra ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... you can just descry rising above that maze of buildings, in the upper hall of justice, is a species of glass shrine, in which the relic is to be seen: a sword of curious workmanship, the blade is of keen Toledan steel, the heft of ivory and mother-of-pearl. 'Tis the sword of Cordova, won in the bloodiest fray off St. Vincent's promontory, and presented by Nelson to the old capital of the much-loved land of his birth. Yes, the proud Spaniard's sword is to ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... little chariot of pearls and mother-of-pearl, drawn by two magnificent steeds with harness of straw-colored velvet ornamented with sapphires, drew up ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... box Chief Black Bear took certain treasures that he gave to the four little Bunkers who visited his wikiup. He even sent some fresh-water mussel shells, polished like mother-of-pearl, to the absent Margy and Mun Bun, of whom Cowboy ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... from a slit in the roof. This hollow in the wall goes as far as Timea's bedroom, where in former times Herr Brazovics' guests used to pass the night. The concealed passage ends in a glass door which is hidden from the room by a picture. This picture is a mother-of-pearl mosaic representing St. George and the dragon, and appears to be a votive image built into the wall. It has often been proposed to take the picture away, but Timea never would allow it. One of the pieces ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... passing a man. Makassar, formerly ruled by a line of powerful princes as an independent fief, but now subject to a Dutch Governor, has become the capital of Celebes, and occupies an important commercial position. The wharves are filled with bales of copra, mother-of-pearl shells, plumage of native birds, dried fish, bundles of rattan, and precious woods from the primeval forests of the interior. The boom of the fisherman's drum echoes across the water in constant reverberations, a secularised relic of the religious past, originally ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... entirely encrusted in mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze, and beautiful marbles. The mosaic paintings are formed of gold and precious stones of fabulous value. This interior is perhaps the richest in the world in its decoration. San Lorenzo is a patriarchal church, and one of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... round-brimmed, and circled about with a string of the blue convolvulus, which implies delight to these people. Ay! and each man was plunging his hand into the dark and taking in his turn a small notch-edged mother-of-pearl billet from it that flashed soft and silvery as he turned it in his hand to read the name engraved in unknown characters thereon. "Why," I said, with a start, "surely THIS might be the golden pool and these the silver fish—but ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the old careless days Claire's garments had been purchased with a lavish hand, the only anxiety being to secure the most becoming specimen of its kind. There were long crinkly gloves, and a lace handkerchief, and a fan composed of curling feathers and mother-of-pearl sticks, and a dainty bag hanging by golden cords, and a cloak of the newest shape, composed of layers of different-tinted chiffons, which looked more like a cloud at sunset than a garment manufactured by human hands and supposed ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cut a tunnel, three feet wide and six feet high, from our front door to the sidewalk opposite. It was a beautiful cavern, with its walls and roof inlaid with mother-of-pearl and diamonds. I am sure the ice palace of the Russian Empress, in Cowper's poem, was not a more superb ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was more used for domestic furniture than for stationary decoration. The character of the design changed in consequence, and mother-of-pearl, ivory, tortoiseshell, silver, and other materials were used. The first Tuscan, or one of the first who did so was Andrea Massari of Siena. A few works in tarsia were still executed, but none of much importance. The choir of S. Sigismondo, ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... vestibule-the hangings of which are of Cordova-leather, with gold ground-seemingly awaiting the good pleasure of some grand lady, is a sedan-chair, decorated with paintings by Fragonard. Farther on, there is one of those superb carved mother-of-pearl coffers, in which Oriental women lay by their finery and jewellery. A splendid Venetian mirror, its frame embellished with tiny figure subjects, and measuring two metres in width and three in height, fills a whole panel of the vestibule. Portieres of Chinese satin, ornamented with ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... not Oxford," said the scholar, with a knowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but that suddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber, with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted poor James there in the carriage as he sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth's spirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter during the rest ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... different features, and separate the many threads of sensation which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing its exceeding glory. I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... enjoyed dressing; everything that she put on seemed an adornment to her. She delighted in the rosy reflections of her skin, in her pretty light dress of a pinkish white material, in her broad sash of pink silk fastened behind with a buckle of mother-of-pearl, in her straw hat trimmed with bright pink ribbons on top and yellow-pink ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... able to think. He was not in the least degree drunk. To test himself he took up a sword from the table, and, getting the right spot, balanced it on his finger. He could speak, too, as well as anybody. He turned to a long Moorish musket inlaid with gems and mother-of-pearl, and began to describe it. He was quite fluent and sensible, although his voice sounded remote in his own ears. He was satisfied. He had his nerves under control. He would go through the next hour without anyone suspecting the madness that was ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... mirror, framed in the fantastic style of the early Venetians; a glass which had belonged to the marquis and had erstwhile reflected the light beauty of his noble spouse. Pausing about as long as it would have taken a lady to adjust a curl, he peeped into a Dutch cabinet of ebony and mother-of-pearl and was studying a charming creature painted on ivory, whose head like that of Bluebeard's wife was subsequently separated from her lovely shoulders, when a light footstep behind him interrupted his scrutiny. Turning, he greeted the young girl, and, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... beveled at the edge, sized with glue, put around the bow, and overlapped at the back. I also glue a small piece of leather on the left-hand side of the bow above the handle to prevent the arrow chafing the wood at this spot. This is called the arrow plate and usually is made of mother-of-pearl or bone; leather is better. These finishing pieces are wrapped temporarily with ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... several piles of sheep-skins round the tent, and by one of these three women were standing. Two of these were richly dressed in gowns of handsome striped materials. They wore head-dresses of silver work with beads of malachite and mother-of-pearl, and had heavy silver ornaments hanging on their breasts. Their hair fell down their backs in two thick braids. The other woman was evidently of inferior rank. All were leaning over a pile of skins covered with costly furs, on which a boy of seven ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Earl, then at Treviso, declined to be Charles's minister on the score of 'broken health.' {127a} Charles, as we saw, vainly asked the Earl for a meeting at Venice in 1749. Indeed, Charles got nothing from his adherent but a mother-of-pearl snuff-box, with the portrait of the old gentleman. {127b} The Earl dwelt, not always on the best terms, with his brother, Marshal Keith, at Berlin, and was treated as a real friend, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... was amid mounds and ruins. We found green coins, pottery fragments, and shells with very lovely mother-of-pearl. The Dujail ran near by, and made a green streak through an arid waste. The whole landscape seemed one dust-heap, sand and rubbish. But by the brook were poppies, marguerites, delicate pink campions, wheat and barley growing as weeds of former cultivation, ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... of nettle, was far stronger than any English line of the same thickness. Their fishing-nets, though coarse, answered their purpose. They were often eighty fathoms in length. Harpoons, made of cane, were used to catch fish, and fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl. One used for trawling had a white tuft of dog's or hog's hair attached to it, to look like the tail of a fish. The fishermen watched for the birds which always follow a shoal of bonetas, and seldom returned without a prize. Both sexes were expert swimmers, and would dash out through the ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... from its native country the far greater part was consumed by the subjects of Justinian. They were still more intimately acquainted with a shell-fish of the Mediterranean, surnamed the silk-worm of the sea: the fine wool or hair by which the mother-of-pearl affixes itself to the rock is now manufactured for curiosity rather than use; and a robe obtained from the same singular materials was the gift of the Roman emperor to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... received great development, as did also the lacquer industry. Vermilion lacquer was invented in the time of Temmu, and soon five different colours could be produced, while to the Nara artisans belongs the inception of lacquer strewn with makie. Lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl was another beautiful concept of the Nara epoch. A special tint of red was obtained with powdered coral, and gold and silver were freely used in leaf or in plates. As yet, history does not find any Japanese painter worthy of record. Chinese and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... an opal; the white sea is the flower of the breathless midsummer. And in its clear, silent waters, a few days, in the culmination of the heat, bring forth translucent living creatures, many-shaped jelly-fish, coloured like mother-of-pearl. ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... eye most was his trousseau. Say! he was dressed to the minute, from the pink in his buttonhole, to the mother-of-pearl gloves; and the back of his frock coat had an in-curve such as your forty-fat sisters dream about. Why, as far as lines went, he had Jimmy Hackett and Robert Mantell on the back shelf. Oh, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... going back to turn door-handles, the sitting in grotesque and untoward positions, the fondness for fingering any smooth and shiny objects, such as mother-of-pearl, develop into manias for change—change of scenery, of occupation, of affections, of people—change that inevitably necessitates misery; for breaking—breaking promises, contracts, family ties, furniture—but breaking, always breaking; for sensuality—sensuality sometimes venial, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... to pray about, my dear. Do you think this little midge is too small for God to have made it, and given it life, and spread that mother-of-pearl light on its wings? Do you think yourself too small to pray? or your fault ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bottles—the intervening ones, containing perfumed head-dresses, formed of braids of ribands and gold lace, which descend to the ground. A warehouse of Turkish tables exhibited the luxurious ingenuity of the workers in mother-of-pearl. They were richly wrought in gold and silver ornaments. Within seven miles of Cairo, there still exists a wonder of the old time, which must have made a great figure in the Arab legends—a petrified forest lying in the desert, and which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... lightness. The final touch of any painter properly so named, of Correggio—Titian—Turner—or Reynolds—would be always quite invisible to any one watching the progress of the work, the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparently careless, nay, to the painter himself almost unconscious. Great painters are so organized that they do their best work without effort: but analyze the touches afterwards, and you will find the structure and depth ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... sat down across the hearth from me, and neither of us said anything. The firelight flickered over the room, bringing out the faded hues of the old Japanese prints on the walls, gleaming in the mother-of-pearl eyes of the dragon on the screen, setting a grotesque god on a cabinet to nodding. And it threw into relief the strong profile of the man across from me, as ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pavilion, its whirling company of dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some thaumaturge ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... forgotten the good old merchant, over whose shoulder we were peeping, while he read the newspaper. Let us now suppose him putting on his three-cornered gold-laced hat, grasping his cane, with a head inlaid of ebony and mother-of-pearl, and setting forth, through the crooked streets of Boston, on various errands, suggested by the advertisements of the day. Thus he communes with himself: I must be mindful, says he, to call at Captain Scut's, in Creek Lane, and examine his rich velvet, whether ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frame. There was no question that the flowers masked some better painting, some portrait, no doubt, for enough was shown at the bottom to enable him to make out a strip of a brown velvet coat, and even one mother-of-pearl button of a brown velvet waistcoat. He stared at the flowers, he held a candle close to them in the hope of being able to trace some outline, to discover something of what lay behind. But the colour had been laid on with no sparing hand, the veil was impenetrable. Even the green caterpillar ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... afterward she was in her bed. Miss Lydia, naturally very inquisitive, and as slow as every Englishwoman is about undressing herself, moved over to the table, pretended she was looking for a pin, lifted up the mezzaro, and saw a long stiletto—curiously mounted in silver and mother-of-pearl. The workmanship was remarkably fine. It was an ancient weapon, and just the sort of one an amateur ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... grand and imposing when it assembled at daybreak before the palace gates. The uniforms of the girl soldiers were pretty and of gay colors, and their silver-tipped spears were bright and glistening, the long shafts being inlaid with mother-of-pearl. All the officers wore sharp, gleaming swords, and shields edged with peacock- feathers; and it really seemed that no foe could by any possibility ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in English dresses, all rouged, and all with bad teeth: which you notice instantly from their contrast to the almost animal, too glossy mother-of-pearl whiteness and the regularity of the teeth of the laughing, loud-talking country-women and servant-girls, who with their clean white stockings and with slippers without heel quarters, tripped along the dirty streets, as ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to produce this illusion is the Hamaguri,—a Japanese mollusk much resembling a clam. Opening its shell, it sends into the air a purplish misty breath; and that mist takes form and defines, in tints of mother-of-pearl, the luminous vision of H[o]rai and ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... stables, and his stud of sea-horses; but they are seldom made use of, except upon public feasts or rejoicing days. Some, after they have trained them, take delight in riding them, and show their skill and dexterity in races; others put them to chariots of mother-of-pearl, adorned with an infinite number of shells of all sorts, of the brightest colours. These chariots are open; and in the middle there is a throne upon which the king sits, and shows himself to his subjects. The horses are trained up to draw by themselves; so that there is no occasion for a charioteer ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... left for the wedding, the greatest event the 'Traveller's Joy' had ever had on record," said Sydney, as she touched up the etching at the top of her paper, sitting on a low stool by a low mother-of-pearl inlaid Eastern table. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... delicate silk curtains at the windows, and the mirrors of polished steel between the carved ivory lattices. Great porcelain vases, such as are never seen here, were disposed about the room, and jars of flowers of strange hues stood on mats of yellow wool. Furniture inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, and coral, decked the apartment, and a small, rich table held an exquisite tea-set. Swan had just been drinking from it, and the room was full of the fragrance. He toyed with the tea-cup, and half dozed. Then, rousing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... don't. When the beautiful Princess Alicia consents to partake of the salmon, - as I think she will, - you will find she will leave a fish-bone on her plate. Tell her to dry it, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... merciless tearing of sleep from his soul wrought magic and transformed him into a glowing, jeweled specter. He sprouted toes and long legs; he rose and inflated his sleek emerald frog-form; his sides blazed forth a mother-of-pearl waist-coat—a myriad mosaics of pink and blue and salmon and mauve; and from nowhere if not from the very depths of his throat, there slowly rose twin globes,—great eyes,—which stood above the flatness of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... said it came; but the cupidity of the Spaniards was excited by strings of pearls round the arms of some of them. These, they said, were procured at the sea-coast on the northern side of Paria, and they showed the mother-of-pearl shells ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... treatment, the psychophysiological symptoms came back to a certain degree. She requested me by a letter from England to give her some help by suggestion to suppress again the recurring intrusions. As I had observed her strong suggestibility, I sent her over the ocean a little pencil of mother-of-pearl which she had seen in my hand, and advised her to look at it until she counted twenty slowly and then to close her eyes and simply to sleep. The autosuggestive effect was unusually strong. She writes from London: "When I saw the enclosure of your letter I felt as if it would burn through ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... in its texture, was partly parted, partly frizzled; a cloth round her waist, and a piece of faded yellow silk on her shoulders, was all her dress. A few silver rings on her fat fingers, and a necklace of mother-of-pearl, were her ornaments. Her teeth were jet black, from the use of the betel-nut, and her whole appearance was such as to excite disgust in the breast ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore loose and easy. Sitting down is my favourite posture. If I have a taste in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have me ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... with it the distant roar of the city and the rumbling of carriage wheels. The light was cold and limpid as spring water; shadows were gathering thickly in the corners of the room and in the folds of the Oriental curtains; from pieces of furniture, here and there, came gleams of ivory and mother-of-pearl; a great gilded Buddha shone out of the background under a tall palm. Something of the exotic mystery of these things was diffused over ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... books, and having, instead of carpets, soft cushions of dark green velvet, so as to supersede the necessity of chairs. This room, evidently a favourite retreat, was adorned at close intervals with girandoles of silver and mother-of-pearl; and the interstices of the book-cases were filled with mirrors, set in silver: the handles of the doors were ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were strong enough to wake up the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart in a delicate crescendo of delight and died away swiftly. I was bitterly tired. The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak. It came at last with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had never seen before in the tropics, unglowing, almost gray, with a strange reminder of ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Hephaestion's mouth with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to head, adorned with sea-shells; two large shells on her shoulders, a trident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs, the chest of drawers, those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the backs of the chairs, the clock on the mantelpiece and the harmless-looking ebony caskets at either end, lastly, the whatnot filled with shells, with red pin-cushions, with mother-of-pearl boats and an enormous ostrich-egg, the whole discreetly lighted by a shaded lamp standing on a small round table: this collection of ugly, peaceable, reasonable furniture, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OPERA ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... kind—Venetians, carved with heavy ornaments, like English plate of the present day; Romans, distinguishable among the others for a certain dash that artists call flafla; Spanish wreaths in bold relief; Flemings and Germans with quaint figures, tortoise-shell frames inlaid with copper and brass and mother-of-pearl and ivory; frames of ebony and boxwood in the styles of Louis Treize, Louis Quatorze, Louis Quinze, and Louis Seize—in short, it was a unique collection of the finest models. Pons, luckier than the art museums of Dresden and Vienna, possessed a ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... would capture him," says William Hamilton Gibson, "for he is off in a spangling streak of glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the little insect; for in the space of a few seconds, as you hold him in your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull orange." A dead beetle loses all this wonderful luster. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jeweled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... together, I would tell you what sort of face Puppet's was; that it was a bright face, with blue eyes, just the color of the blue ribbon that went first round the guitar's neck, and then round Puppet's; that Puppet's teeth were as white as the mother-of-pearl pegs that held her guitar strings at the bottom; that her cheeks were as white as the ivory keys; that her hair was long, and yellow—just the shade of the guitar's ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... for any adventure that might put an honest or dishonest penny into his pocket. About half an hour later he found himself on the leading retail street in Cincinnati. In front of him walked a lady, fashionably attired, holding a mother-of-pearl portemonnaie carelessly in her hand. He brushed by her, and at the same moment the pocketbook was snatched from ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid with mother-of-pearl ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have been manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter. It impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the principal island of the Society group, and under the missions long established there, the natives have become civilized. In addition to the usual trade, sugar and mother-of-pearl are ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... the men exchange the nose-ring of tortoise-shell for a large, finely carved plate of mother-of-pearl. In the perforated sides of the nose they place thin sticks, which stand high up towards the eyes. In the hair they wear sticks and small boards covered with the same feathers as those used for feather money. They have dancing-sticks of a most elaborate description, heavy ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... man leaned again heavily on the rail. The monosyllable was eloquent. Impulsively she bent toward him, then caught herself. For a moment she looked out at the water undulating under the moon like mother-of-pearl on a waving fan. "But it was all right to say I loved you then," she went on reflectively, after a pause. "I had a perfect right then to tell you that I loved you better than all the small total of ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... violets in the air. On a table by the window lay a magnificent chicken-skin fan sent by my Lord Coventry for Maria's birthday: it was covered with rosy figures of Cupids swinging garlands in blue air, the mother-of-pearl sticks latticed with gold. It lay beside a lace handkerchief, as if a fair hand had flung it careless down. A decanter of purple Burgundy, with two glasses, was hard by, and a small painting of the lovely sisters from the hand of Neroni, who had asked the favour to depict them as wood-nymphs. They ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... brilliant points, and, when the moon rose, it was accompanied by four mock moons bound in a halo that widely encircled the true orb. The moon-dogs shone intermittently with prismatic colors, like disks of mother-of-pearl, and ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... up by the window through which the shimmering lake shone in the sunset like rosy mother-of-pearl. Far up the mountain sounded the faint tinkling of goat-bells, and the clear, sweet yodelling of a peasant, on his homeward way. At intervals, the deep tolling of the bell of St. Oswald floated out across ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... yet perfectly docile, pulled out the little mother-of-pearl rosary that she always wore under her dress, and reverently murmured one of the prayers her mother had taught her. After which, as if beguiled by the association of ideas into thinking it bedtime, she curled herself up on the bench, ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... quivered. He hung his head, and nervously fingered his mother-of-pearl cigarette-holder. After a moment's pause, Sarudine turned sharply round, and, jingling the keys loudly, opened the drawer ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... an ivory pianoforte on a mother-of-pearl music-stool, trying a sonata of Herz. She rose when thus apostrophized. Miriam de Mendoza ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray |
