"Filigree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend, whose imagination was quite as excitable as his taste was correct, soon wove a romance around the picture. It was evidently not the work of a novice; it was as much out of place in this obscure and inelegant domicil, as a diamond set in filigree, or a rose among pigweed. How came it there? who was the original? what her history and her fate? Her parentage and her nurture must have been refined; she must have inspired love in the chivalric; perchance this was the last relic of an illustrious exile, the last memorial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... covered with a head-dress of pink gauze, embroidered with gold thread and purple chenille, and ornamented with pearl beads and artificial flowers, and over all a long white gauze veil trimmed with lace. Her ear-rings are gold filigree work with pendant pearls, and around her neck is a string of pure amber beads and a gold necklace. She wears a jacket of black velvet, and a gilt belt embroidered with blue, and fastened with a silver gilt filigree buckle in the form of a bow knot with pendants. On her ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... a very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... in France, my father told me. In consequence of the treachery of these workmen Germany also soon learned how to make mirrors, and the fame of the Venetian artisans declined just as the Council had predicted it would. But it will be long before any other country can equal mine in the making of filigree or spun glass. You will, senorita, see much of this beautiful work while ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... a pair of red stockings and Moorish slippers for her feet; she massed up her black hair into a tower upon her head, and roped it about with a chain of sequins which had served their last chaffer at Venice; she girt a belt of filigree gold and turquoise about her waist, gave her a finishing pat, and stood ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... He has absorbed the spirit of the South, the East, and the West. He's in every way what you may call a representative American. There's no question about the home atmosphere of those old colonial houses. They make one feel sorry for the dinky, finicky, filigree houses built by most people in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... consider that our musical public is obliged to 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 music of the period, possibly it might seem strange ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... sell some of his family jewels, if he wanted to stay at Saint Moritz. Unhappily, he now had only the fine diamond ring, which he wore on his finger, and a Persian bracelet composed of three golden plates connected by a band of filigree work. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... once given over to the Spaniard. Here were still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure, the eye saw, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies. Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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 ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... he, the cruel, hateful Lauderdale of the Cabal. This detestable couple, however, furnished with massive grandeur the apartments of Ham House. They had the ceilings painted by Verrio; the furniture was rich, and even now the bellows and brushes in some of the rooms are of silver filigree. One room is furnished with yellow damask, still rich, though faded; the very seats on which Charles, looking around him, saw Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (the infamous Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale—and knew not, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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
... his own mistake in regard to the hour designated upon Mr. Carewe's cards of invitation. This small embarrassment, however, did not prevent General Trumble and young Mr. Chenoweth from coming to high words over Miss Carewe's little, gilt-filigree "programme" ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... person bore no similarity to that of the young ladies. In all her splendour and lustre, she looked like a fairy or a goddess. In her coiffure, she had a band of gold filigree work, representing the eight precious things, inlaid with pearls; and wore pins, at the head of each of which were five phoenixes in a rampant position, with pendants of pearls. On her neck, she had a reddish gold necklet, like coiled dragons, with a fringe of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... 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
... true Moore. These facts you must hereafter relate to your son or whoever may be fortunate enough to inherit from you. It is the legacy which goes with this house and one which no inheritor as yet has refused either to receive or to transmit. Listen. You have often noted the gold filigree ball which I wear on my watch-guard. This ball is the talisman of our house, of this house. If, in the course of your life you find yourself in an extremity from which no issue seems possible mind the strictness of the injunction—an extremity from which no issue ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... menials to wait on you and anticipate your every want? That is, I must explain, every want compatible with—ahem!—the captive condition. Would you be happy in your confinement, practising with the dumb-bells, riding up and down the floors on a bicycle and gazing at pictures and filigree caskets and big malachite vases and eating dinners of many, many courses? Or would you begin to wish that you might be allowed to live on sixpence a day—and earn it; and even envy the ragged tramp who dines on a handful of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... probably be placed in the eighth century of our era. The Ardagh Chalice belongs probably to about the same date. It was found in a rath at Ardagh, county Limerick, in 1868. It measures 7 inches in height and 9-1/2 in diameter. Around the cup is a band of fine filigree interlaced ornament in the form of panels divided by half beads of enamel. Below this are the names of the twelve Apostles in faint Celtic lettering. The two handles are beautifully decorated with panels of interwoven ornament, and on the sides are two ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... darker green. The Vegan girl retreated from Ramsey's side in fright. Symm raised his hand and an Irwadian waiter brought over a drink in a purple stem glass with a filigree pattern of titanium, bowing obsequiously. Symm lurched with the glass toward Ramsey. "I'm telling you to go," he said in ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... they wore faded, old, black coats,—frequently frock-coats, at that,—which certainly contrasted unfavourably, at least so far as heightening the gaiety of the scene was concerned, with the green velvet jackets, brilliant waistcoats with gold filigree and silver buttons and red sashes of the Mexicans. That there was not a man present but what was togged out in his best and was armed, it goes without saying, even if the weapons of the Mexicans were in the form of murderous knives concealed somewhere about their persons ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... 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 first glass of port. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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
... the forest. The trees grew so thickly and their foliage spread so widely that I could see nothing of the moon-light save that here and there the high branches made a tangled filigree against the starry sky. As the eyes became more used to the obscurity one learned that there were different degrees of darkness among the trees—that some were dimly visible, while between and among them there were coal-black shadowed patches, like ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are closed like ours, although they are not so tight. It is the rule that they must be of silk with a gold fringe below, or with border and buttons of the same which among these people is always of filigree or of solid gold. In that they consider only ostentation, without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... streets were transformed into fairyland by the delicate disposition of snow in festoons on door-post and railing, ledge and lintel, from roof to cellar. The trees especially, all frosted with shining filigree, were a wonder to look upon; and Beth would wander about the alleys in Kensington Gardens, and gaze at the glory of the white world under the sombre grey of the murky clouds, piled up in awesome magnificence, until she ached with yearning for some word of human speech, some way to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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
... 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, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... equally into two divisions. The two places at which the principals in the duel were to take their stand were marked out. Then Regimbart opened his case. It was lined with red sheep's-leather, and contained four charming swords hollowed in the centre, with handles which were adorned with filigree. A ray of light, passing through the leaves, fell on them, and they appeared to Cisy to glitter like silver vipers ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 of heath, to see ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... great, poet is incomparably our most brilliant versifier. Dryden's strength turns in his work into something more fragile and delicate, polished with infinite care like lacquer, and wrought like filigree work to the last point of conscious and perfected art. He was not a great thinker; the thoughts which he embodies in his philosophical poems—the Essay on Man and the rest, are almost ludicrously out of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... 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. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... antique in style, and the work is believed to be of the first or second century. A hasp is attached to the lid, but there is no sign of hinge or corresponding button. The smaller casket is rectangular, resembling that found at Grado. On the lid is a cross in dark-blue enamel with surroundings of filigree. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... half my overture. 100 Stories were good for men who had no books, (Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry thought, With here and there a fancy fit to see Wrought in quaint grace in golden filigree,— Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade, (For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 110 And stories now, to suit a public nice, Must be half ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... impatient. It seemed as if Pansy would never stop drinking; and the repose of the pool, the idle motions of the insects and flies upon it, the placid waving of the flags, the leaf-skeletons, like Genoese filigree, placidly sleeping at the bottom, by their contrast with her own turmoil ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Mrs. Walraven 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 ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... looks like a girl to-night, But she is old. The plaits that lie along her pillow Are not gold, But threaded with filigree, And uncanny cold. ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... 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, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... room, where I had left a student-like litter of books and papers, were seated half a dozen persons. Three were men and three were women. The table was heaped with a prodigality of luxuries. Luscious eastern fruits were piled up in silver filigree vases, through whose meshes their glowing rinds shone in the contrasts of a thousand hues. Small silver dishes that Benvenuto might have designed, filled with succulent and aromatic meats, were distributed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... foot of the mountains, on the outskirts of the village. These were of curious forms and excellent workmanship, and included large ornaments for the ears and pendants for the neck, made of thin sheets of gold; turtles and human skulls cast in a single piece; and most curious of all, odd pieces of filigree where the gold-wire was coiled into strange human heads. One of these was made half of gold and half of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... third shaft over, the other cage was dropping like a plummet, a block of golden light walled in by black filigree-work and bisected vertically by the black line ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 lighted ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... down to just above the ankle, where they widened out and were slashed 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
... were tattooed from toes to ankles with a net-like pattern, and from the ankles to the waistline, where the design terminated in a handsome girdle, there were curves, circles and filigree, all in accord, all part of a harmonious whole, and most pleasing to the eye. The pattern upon her feet was much like that of sandals or high mocassins, indicating a former use of leg-coverings in a cold climate. Titihuti herself, after an anxious inch-for-inch ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and took a mouthful of the tea, which, like the morality of the palace, was strong and bitter. But his ample chest expanded with just the slightest sigh of regret, causing the massive episcopal cross of gold filigree, set with a single sapphire, which rested thereon, to rise and fall gently. Miss Matilda's hawklike eye saw and noted this as the first slight sign of rebellion, and she hastened to mete out justice swift ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... minutes tea was brought. Very delicate was the china, very old the plate, very thin the bread and butter, and very small the lumps of sugar. Sugar was evidently Mrs Jamieson's favourite economy. I question if the little filigree sugar-tongs, made something like scissors, could have opened themselves wide enough to take up an honest, vulgar good-sized piece; and when I tried to seize two little minnikin pieces at once, so as not to be detected in too many returns to the sugar-basin, they absolutely dropped ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Annabel, reveling in the crystal, filigree, coral, and mosaic trinkets spread before her while Rose completed her rapture by adding sundry ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Like a scarlet skin On an ivory fruit; And a filigree frost Of frail notes lost From ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... Switzerland; morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and Pompeii, like petrified minced veal; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of Vesuvius; Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish slippers, Tuscan hairpins, Carrara sculpture, Trastaverini scarves, Genoese velvets and filigree, Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewellery, Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by the Pope himself, and an infinite variety of lumber. There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of places; and there was one ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... be seen, in mosaic, generals offering conquered cities to the Emperor on the palms of their hands. And on every side are columns of basalt, gratings of silver filigree, seats of ivory, and tapestries embroidered with pearls. The light falls from the vaulted roof, and Antony proceeds on his way. Tepid exhalations spread around; occasionally he hears the modest patter of a sandal. Posted in the ante-chambers, the custodians—who resemble ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... ornament of the double tuft. The cap was small, and jaunty; trimmed with silk velvet—as is common here with men careful to adorn their persons; but this man's cap was finished off with a jewelled button and golden filigree work. He was dressed in a short jacket with a stand up collar; and that also was covered with golden buttons and with golden button-holes. It was all gilt down the front, and all lace down the back. The rows of buttons were ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... destroyed by damp and dust. They are true curiosities in the dwellings of these northern aborigines, and look almost solemn ranged against the wall. In this house there are twenty-four lacquered urns, or tea-chests, or seats, each standing two feet high on four small legs, shod with engraved or filigree brass. Behind these are eight lacquered tubs, and a number of bowls and lacquer trays, and above are spears with inlaid handles, and fine Kaga and Awata bowls. The lacquer is good, and several of the urns have daimiyo's crests in gold upon them. One urn and a large covered bowl are beautifully ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Khorassani freebooter had overlooked, besides committing more atrocities upon the population. At the end of another decade an army of Mahrattas took possession, and completed the spoilation by ripping the silver filigree-work off the ceiling of the Throne-room. Not long after this, yet another adventurer took a hand in the work of destruction, tortured the members of the imperial family, and put out the eyes of the helpless old emperor, Shah Alum. Here Lord Lake's cavalcade arrived, too, in 1803, and found the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters as fine as frostwork filigree, which we could not break without destroying a whole world of endearment. That seems an obscure image; but it means what the Germans would call in English—our winter environment. We are imprisoned in a net of our own weaving—an invisible ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Port, Bidache, Cambo, Terciis, &c., for her health, and was always 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, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... and the Thames, and those lying immediately to the west of it, contain huge warehouses and bonded stores, which are filled to suffocation with the "wealth of nations." Dirty streets and narrow lanes here lead to the fountain-head of wealth untold—almost inconceivable. The elegant filigree-work of West End luxury may here be seen unsmelted, as it were, and in the ore. At the same time the rich substances on which fire feeds and fattens are stored here in warehouses which (as they are) should never have been built, and in proximities ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... wore a crown on her head, the basis of which was black velvet. At the top was an aigrette of diamonds of the purest water, the centre one as large as a sixpenny-piece. Solitaires flashing blue flames blazed all over the cap, and the front was ornamented with a dragon in fine filigree work in red Malay gold set with diamonds. I fear to be thought guilty of exaggeration when I write that this child wore seven necklaces, all of gorgeous beauty. The stones were all cut in facets at the back; and highly polished, and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... of those cold mist-mountains were fixed at my very feet. Then said to me the glorious Power, standing in stature as a giant,—'Come! why tarriest thou? Come!'—and instantly there rushed up to us a huge golden throne of light filigree-work, borne upon seven pinions, whereof each was fledged above with feathers fair and white, but underneath they were ribbed batlike, and fringed with black down: and all around fluttered beautiful ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you 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 ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... 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; not only were we allowed to enter the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... bullion, (uncoined gold). Associated words: alchemist, alchemy, auriferous, alloy, assay, assayer, assaying, filigree, aurated, auric, aureate, aurific, aurigraphy, aurivorous, aurocephalous, platinum, aurous, billet, carat, chlorination, chrysography, cupel, foil, cupellation, gild, orphrey, vermeil, gilded, gilding, gilt, orris, amalgamated, goldsmith, bonanza, schlich, inaurate, inauration, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has her darling all to herself—her toy, her plaything—were visible in the large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet dress with its filigree buttons and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes ablaze with excitement, for such an amount of pure gold as that already discovered we had never seen before. But the treasure was not yet half exhausted. The jar seemed a perfect mine of wealth—gold chains, plain and of filigree workmanship, each worth from L10 to L30; ornaments of the same metal of every sort of design, and executed in a style for which the Delhi jewellers are celebrated all over India. Then came small silver caskets filled with pearls, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... "It is impossible to forget the fact that in his piano works he was first and foremost a piano virtuoso, a child prodigy: of whom filigree work (we cannot call this Orientalism, for it was more or less of German pattern, traced from the fioriture of the Italian opera singer) was expected by the public for which his sonatas were written.... We need freshness and sincerity in forming our judgments of art.... ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... sometimes 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
... you. You owe me 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
... only bought the 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... toes and 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
... in the grey dawn, passed up a dry watercourse, and proceeded where the vine was queen and there fell a scented filigree of dead blossom from flowering olives. They had seen a million clusters of tiny grapes already rounding and had passed through wedges and squares of cultivated earth, where sprang alternate patches of corn yellowing to harvest and the lush green of growing maize. Figs ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... a stinker!" he said. "What used to be there was a nice late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century North Italian pistol, all covered with steel filigree-work. A real beauty; much better ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... styles of paper and envelopes, and all stamped in gilt with a monogram composed of the initials E. C., and there was a tiny box of filigree silver ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 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, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... appeared at the slashes. His doublet was of purple cloth, and his short cloak of black velvet, to correspond with his hose; and both were adorned with a great number of small silver buttons richly wrought in filigree. A triple chain of gold hung round his neck; and, in place of a sword or dagger, he wore at his belt an ordinary knife for the purpose of the table, with a small silver case, which appeared to contain writing materials. He might have ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in the Via Goito, a small street leading northwards from the Acqua Sola Promenade. In the same neighbourhood is the broad street Via Assarotti, with at No. 37 the Valdensian and Presbyterian churches. Shops for filigree work in gold and silver in the Via degli Orefici by the side of the Bourse, and at the foot of the Sestiere della Maddalena, which descends from the Piazza delle Fontane Morose. At No. 17 of that Piazza is a good ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... (represent) figuri. Figure (cipher) cifero. Figure (image) figuro. Filament fibro. Filch sxteli. File fajli. File (tool) fajlilo. File (newspapers) legajxo. Filial filia. Filiation genealogio. Filigree filigrano. Fill plenigi. Fillet lumbajxo. Filly cxevalidino. Film membrano, sxeleto. Filter filtrilo. Filth malpurajxo. Filthy malpurega. Fin nagxilo. Final fina. Finally fine. Finance financo. Financial financa. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... was something original, 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 and frills,—d—n the cost!" Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's nest, a clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawn in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem was a light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes—minute they looked from above—rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the specula, en rapport with ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... like, sweet sir," said the lady, lifting up a silver filigree bottle, with an india-rubber cork, ornamented ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... jars with monsters that belched fire; amber-colored shawls, as delicate as woven sighs; and in the small windows that had been converted into display cases, all the trinkets of the extreme Orient, in silver, ivory or ebony; black elephants with white tusks, heavy-paunched Buddhas, filigree jewels, mysterious amulets, daggers engraved from hilt to point. Alternating with these establishments of a free port that lives upon contraband, there were confectioneries owned by Jews, cafes and more cafes, some of the Spanish type with round, marble-topped tables, the clicking ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... must go alone back to her dream. Yet now the dream might change; a strange youth might come riding out of the east, sitting a sorrel horse with a star and a white hind ankle, a long rangy neck and strong quarters; and he—the youth—would wear a broad, gray hat, with a band of silver filigree, a scarlet kerchief at his throat, a scarlet sash at his ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... miles away. Scarcely a ray of sunlight enters its shadowy depths, and looking up from beside the entrance one can see the great pines that crown the sheer fall of rock looming against the skyline in a slender lace-like filigree. Sometimes, when frost bound fast the feeding snows, the Siwash Indians ran their light canoes through, but I never heard of a white man attempting the passage, and one glance was sufficient to show the reason. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... church is probably a little over a hundred feet; but since it also extends downwards through the roof of the church its total perpendicular diameter may well be about a hundred and fifty feet. It is produced by one of Mendelssohn's "Lieder ohne Woerte," and is characteristic of the delicate filigree-work which so often appears as the result ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... the health of the bride and bridegroom, which I most gladly did; and, let me say, so successfully as to bring back unwonted smiles to Campion's face, who now freely forgave me for the gaucheries at the marriage service. Then the guests strolled around, looking at the marriage presents—the usual filigree and useless things that are flung at the poor bride. Bittra took me into a little boudoir of her own to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... are their Parisian sisters. Tea was served, not in cups and saucers, as Jennie had been accustomed to seeing it handed round, but in goblets of clear, thin Venetian glass, each set in a holder of encrusted filigree gold. There were all manner of delicious cakes, for which the city is celebrated. The tea itself had come overland through Russia from China and had not suffered the deterioration which an ocean voyage produces. The decoction was served clear, with sugar if desired, and a slice of ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... whose age 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
... toward her. She could see the shape of it, pale in its light-colored shirt, against the dark filigree of shrubs at the bottom of the steps. His answer sounded indifferent between puffs ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing pages 84 and 85.) These men at that time (1550) had set their ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... we lit 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 ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... they drew their chairs, by way of variety, up to the solitary window of their apartment, and amused themselves with looking at the fantastic filigree work with which the frost had decorated the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... silver from end to 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. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of those filigree balls of gold wrought into openwork, about the size of a walnut, that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence supposed to be reviving in case miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to overwhelm her; as ladies ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... 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 ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... both could see very well. At first sight what my father saw was a great cave, like a large church or cathedral, here in the hill or mountain. Strangely broken was it in places, and great columns, like stalactites, were very numerous. There were others that looked like filigree work. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... part in their degree Gave gladly gifts of pride, Tall silver ships, complete with sea, And birds of aureate filigree, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that vainest endeavor to the trivialities of sight-seeing which endear the memory of monuments and make the experience of them endurable. The beautiful choir, with its walls pierced in gigantic filigree, might have been art or not, as one chose, but the three young girls who smiled and whispered with the young man near it were nature, which there could be no two minds about. They were pathetically privileged there to a moment of the free interplay of youthful interests and emotions ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... head he reached down a small mahogany case. This he opened, and from it extracted a large meerschaum pipe elaborately mounted with gold filigree work. Having charged the pipe from an embroidered pouch filled with choice Turkish tobacco, he struck an allumette ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... 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
... had no curtains, but were thickly frilled outside with the 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 ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from nuggets or masses of the native metals; this, however, is not susceptible of proof. The work is very skillfully done, so that we find it difficult to ascertain the precise methods of manipulation. The general effect in the more pretentious pieces resembles that of our filigree work, in which the parts are produced by hammering and united by soldering; yet there are many evidences of casting, and these must be considered with care. As a rule simple figures and some portions of composite figures present very decided ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... with their Consul, presented us with a quantity of chocolate and as much sugar, with twelve fine sarcenet napkins laced thereunto belonging, with a very large silver pot to make it in, and twelve very fine cups to drink it out of, filigree, with covers of the same, with two very large salvers to ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... the blue, black, and brown clouds change quickly to purple, pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky itself forms a background for the dissolving community of interlacing filaments of priceless filigree, till in time too full of interest to compute by measure, the whole heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy of color, a prodigality of shifting scene, making one think of the descriptions essayed by ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... sunset sea—a goblet thick inlaid With jewels wrought in golden filigree, An opal from some elfin treasury Burning with fire and flashing every shade; While round the dim horizon, wide displayed The clouds pile up their largess tenderly As if to clothe the beauty of the sea In filmy gossamer and ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... their costume was picturesque and becoming, and some traces of the old style are yet to be seen throughout the pastoral districts; a close body, a jaunty little cap on the head, with a heavy tassel, ornamented with gold or silver bands, silver clasps to their belts, and filigree buttons down the front, give them a very pleasing appearance. Of late years, however, fashion has begun to assert her sway, even in this isolated part of the world, and the native costume ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... probably, as being the chief glory of some stately cathedral, still more precious, which ought only to be trusted to the gentle hands of a cultivated and scientific artist, connoisseur, and expert. The glass should all be handled as if it were old filigree silver. If the lead is so perished that it is absolutely impossible to avoid taking the glass down, it should be received on the scaffold itself, straight from its place in the stone, between packing-boards lined with sheets of ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... a little late, and she wore a beautiful gown, of a classic cut, with exquisite classic embroideries and a filigree band on her lovely hair. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress, and he took one keen, sweeping glance and then looked away. He had rather the attitude of a soldier on parade, to whom the colonel had said "eyes front." Only he was his ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... against a few real ones in my long and varied career," Irish remarked reminiscently, "and I've noticed that a hoss never has any respect or admiration for a swell rig. When he gets real busy it ain't the silver filigree stuff that's going to help you hold connections with your saddle, and a silver-mounted bridle-bit ain't a darned bit better than a ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... drawing-room, which had quite an oriental aspect. Eastern curtains veiled the windows, the floor was piled with Persian carpets, and a wide divan heaped with cushions and draped with bright Bedawin rugs ran along one side of the room. There were narghilehs and chibouques, and cups of filigree and porcelain for the dispensing of delectable Arab coffee. Quaint brackets of Morocco work, Eastern pictures, portraits, Persian enamels, and curios of every description covered the walls. The most striking object ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... 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 ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... mirrors, with a velvet rail that 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. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... beads, worked in very beautiful patterns, and finished off with a tassel of beads, or else a large number of big silver or brass buttons strung together round her neck. Her ears are decorated with filigreed studs of silver gilt, with a setting of scarlet cloth behind the filigree work to show ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... 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 the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... you don't lie down and sleep, instead of walking 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 one of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... passing into the blue. And then I saw the peacocks. There they were in the road before me, three of them, and tailless, brown, speckled birds, with dark-blue necks and ragged crests. They stepped archly over the filigree snow, and their bodies moved with slow motion, like small, light, flat-bottomed boats. I admired them, they were curious. Then a gust of wind caught them, heeled them over as if they were three frail boats opening their feathers like ragged sails. They hopped and skipped with ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... "lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716, taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, Marking, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... fragrance of innumerable libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall ascend day and night through the arches of his funereal monument. What are the poor dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of spikes that stand at the corners of St. Genevieve's filigree-cased sarcophagus to this ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a scarf here, hung up a pretty silk bag there, placed Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigree easels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run and which was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot and a broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one time prized by the babies of her aunt's family, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... of relief when Gaston came in bringing a little tray with two filigree-cased cups ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... first is 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 for the most ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the people could be watched at work of all kinds, from blacksmithy to finest filigree silver work inlaid with the tiny colored feathers of the brightly colored kingfisher; and from rough carpenter work to the finest ivory carving for which the Chinese are famous. Of course the amount they pay for some of this work of extreme skill is ridiculously small, ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... thousand prohibitions, in that slough of melancholy, whence thou hast already fished out Bertha, and come back with thy tresses dishevelled, like a girl who has been ill-treated by a regiment of soldiers! Where are thy golden aiglets and bells, thy filigree flowers of fantastic design? Where hast thou left thy crimson head-dress, ornamented with precious gewgaws that cost a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac |
