"Lacquer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room by a servant and placed around a brazier of charcoal. In a few minutes servant after servant entered, prostrating herself to the ground, and placing before us some Japanese delicacy. One served soup in small lacquer bowls, another fish, a third cakes, a fourth tea in very tiny cups, and others various things, and finally saki, the wine of the country, was produced, served in small cups like the tea. Then came the girls. Seven approached, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... husband is walking about the deck in a bewildered manner, with a lean daughter on each arm: the carroty-tufted hope of the family is already smoking on the foredeck in a travelling costume checked all over, and in little lacquer-tip pod jean boots, and a shirt embroidered with pink boa-constrictors. 'What is it that gives travelling Snobs such a marvellous propensity to rush into a costume? Why should a man not travel in a coat, &c.? but think proper to dress himself like a harlequin in mourning? See, even ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Jack Darrow, flicking the final drops of lacquer from the paintbrush he had been using. "That's the last stroke. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... sunlight that bathes its sides like a golden sea. It seems to shake and tremble in the light like a fire. And all about the platform, edging it ere it falls away below, are little shrines, marvels of carven woodwork and red lacquer. They have tapering roofs, one above another, till they, too, end in a golden spire full of little bells with tongues. As the wind blows the tongues move to and fro, and the air is full of music, so faint, so clear, like 'silver stir of strings in ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... those not the worst of them. The quantity of silver in the room astonished me: there were whole tables of it, and braziers and sconces and cressets beyond reckoning; and there were at least five or six chiming clocks that the King had given to Her Grace; and tall Japanese presses and cabinets of lacquer ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... slippers with gilt heels, Caroline's flowered Chinese silk. The room was large and square, with a Turkey floor carpet, and walls hung with paper printed in lavender and black perspectives from copper plates. A great many candles had been lighted, on tables and mantel, and in lacquer stands. One of the latter, at Mrs. Winscombe's side, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and a whim of her murdered husband had led him to replace the original, delicate, rather severe furniture by a most comfortable broad couch, two no less comfortable chairs with arms, a small red lacquer table and a dozen cushions. He had hung on each wall a drawing of dancing-girls by Degas. Since the coverings of the couch and the cushions were of Chinese silken embroideries, the interior appeared a somewhat bizarre mixture of the Oriental and ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... experience. I revelled in the full lap of life. I passed through many lands, civilised and barbaric; but it was my especial delight to strike down to that simple, passionate, essential nature which lies beneath the thickest lacquer of refinements in our civilised societies. Oh, what a ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... creature was not reassured. He pointed out that things had been stolen out of the Louvre, which was, he dared say, even better watched. And there was that marvellous cabinet on the landing, black lacquer with silver herons, which alone would repay a couple of burglars. A wheelbarrow, some old sacking, and they could trundle it off under ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... innovation for the benefit of women are two drawing-room pages. These are small, well-trained little boys in buttons, livery or done up in stippers, white linen and turbans, who at intervals of fifteen minutes carry about among the callers large lacquer trays, on which are spread violets and rose leaves, crystallized and salted nuts with ginger. One is supposed to scoop up a few of the confections or nuts ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Gibson and de Leval were in the salon at the Ministry, the room of which I have spoken so often as the yellow salon, because of the satin upholstery of its Louis XVI. furniture of white lacquer—that bright, almost laughing little salon, all done in the gayest, lightest tones, where so many little dramas were played. All three of them were deeply moved and very anxious—the eternal contrast, as de Leval ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... the most exquisite room in the world. It had comfort of soft chairs and bright fire and the smell of tea and cigarettes; but it also had the style, to him so precious, with which his fancy invested her. The note of the room was red lacquer partly inherited, partly collected, the hangings of a harmonious tone, and the only pictures on the distempered walls the colour-prints of the late eighteenth century. It had the glow of smiling austerity, the unseizable, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... threshold of that restaurant you turn your back on the present and find yourself in the Far East. I liked it better than Mrs. Ess Kay's gorgeous Aladdin's Cave, for there's nothing imitation or stagey about this place. There's real lacquer, and real silver and gold on the strange partitions; real Chinese mural paintings; real Chinese lamps swinging from the ceilings; real ebony stools to sit on at the inlaid octagon tables, and real ebony chopsticks to eat with if you choose, instead ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... some of the most beautiful silks and embroideries that I ever did see, and I went into a lacquer shop where there wuz the most elegant furniture and rich bronzes inlaid with gold and silver. They make the finest bronzes in the world; a little pair of vases wuz fifteen hundred dollars and you couldn't get 'em for less. But why shouldn't there be beautiful things in a country where every ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the room with a kind of confused pleasure in its pale shadows and spots of dark rich colour. The old lacquer screen behind Clare's head looked like a lustreless black pool with gold leaves floating on it; and another piece, a little table at her elbow, had the brown bloom and the pear-like curves of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... set out on a small lacquer table near his chair, and his fox-terrier watched him with imploring eyes, occasionally voicing his feelings in a stifled bark. The boy came in answer to his call, carrying the lamp in his hands, and put it down near Hartley, ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... over which flit tropical birds of emerald and azure; strange pomegranates bleed their seeds at regular intervals. The couch is an adaptation, in colour, of the celebrated Sumurun bed. The dressing table and the chaise-longue are of Chinese lacquer. A heavy bronze incense burner pours forth fumes of Bichara's Scheherazade. From the window frames, stifling the light, depend flame-coloured brocaded curtains embroidered in Egyptian enamelled beads. It is a triumph, this chamber, of style Ballet Russe. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... food crop is RICE. Other food crops are wheat, barley, and the soya bean, but these not numerously so. The principal cultivated products for purposes of commerce are the mulberry tree (for supporting the silkworm), the tea plant, the lacquer tree, and the camphor tree. Rice also is grown for export as well as for home consumption, and COTTON is very largely grown for home manufacture. No milk, butter, or cheese is produced, scarcely any meat, no wood, and scarcely any leather. (For boots and shoes paper is ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... and clapped his hands, the great diamond cutting an oval of many colors. Coolies were given up by the night, and ran to obey his guttural, musical commands. They returned with steaming bowls of rice and meat, and a narrow lacquer table. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... was told, in patent medicine, which is hawked over Japan generally and cures everything. But the former splendor of the place has left it forever. The rooms in the inn, where neighboring daimyos were wont to rest on their journeys through, are still superb with carving, lacquer and paintings, but no daimyo will ever again hold his traveling court before their tokonoma. The man perchance may again tarry there, but the manner of it all has gone to join the past. Now he who wills may ensconce himself in the daimyo's corner, and ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... many colours were birds and beasts, and men in profile, and queer marks that he knew to be picture-writing; processions of slaves and oxen, reapers and water-bearers. The tints were fresh under their overlaying lacquer. There was even a smell of varnish. He wondered if the contents—if It—were in the same remarkable state of preservation. He rapped on the thin wood—it was cedar, he thought, or perhaps sycamore. The sound was musical, resonant; the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... room was steeped in rosy light—such a pretty room, with chintz curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt Betsy's favourite ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the corner of the terrace, lies Paris, a white line on the horizon, broken by the mass of the Arc de Triomphe, the roof of the Opéra, and the Eiffel Tower, resplendent in a fresh coat of yellow lacquer! ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... palette, pens, coloured crayons, a medley of things; a revolving office chair with a worn crimson footrug before it; a many-shelved glass case against the blank wall, crammed to overflowing with shells and coral and strange grasses, with specimens of ore, with Chinese carvings, with curious lacquer-work; a large brass-bound portfolio stand; on the painted walls plaster-casts of hands and arms and feet, boxing gloves, fencing foils, a glaring tiger's head, a group of photographs; in the corner, a suit of ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the edge of the pond. It was a surface of polished lacquer, darker than the night, and powdered thick with the gold of reflected stars. Leaning over, she marvelled at the silhouette of her own slim figure. It did not seem to have an actual place among these frail phantasmagoria. As she stared on she noticed that the end of the pond farthest ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... sleeve pocket filled with it. Printing is very general, and all sorts of works are produced. Books are printed from wooden blocks on a particularly fine silken paper, on one side only, the blank sides being gummed together. The lacquer work is very fine. They also manufacture silks, and crapes, and linen, and cotton cloth, which, though coarse, is very soft. Many fruits of temperate and tropical climes are grown. The lacquer-tree—the Rhus vernix—which is used ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... admiration regarding the interior of the palace, the furniture of which was handsome and of an original and elegant style. The Emperor's sleeping-room, the only part of the building in which there was a fireplace, was ornamented with wainscoting in Chinese lacquer work, then very old, though the painting and gilding were still fresh, and the cabinet was decorated like the bedroom; and all the apartments, except this, were warmed in winter by immense stoves, which greatly injured the effect of the interior ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... traversing what is popularly known as "curio" street. At this point we request our human horses to trot, instead of going at the mad speed usual to them, in order that we make notes of Japanese life by the way. We pass many shops devoted to the sale of lacquer ware, for which the Japanese are so justly famed, catch glimpses of unequalled egg shell, and Satsuma china, made of a clay, formed only in this neighbourhood, and which, thanks to the European mania for collecting, fetch the most fancy prices; ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... priest of Japan, abroad to study strange lands, sat in his lacquer chair, with face like soft-yellow and wrinkled parchment. Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely bidden to the Val d' Osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm here will welcome a prophet. I shall ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... bought or sold—except to a Buddhist temple—but its tenure was conditional upon planting from one hundred to three hundred mulberry trees (for purposes of sericulture) and from forty to one hundred lacquer trees, according to the grade of the tenant family. Ownership of building-land (takuchi) was equally in perpetuity, though its transfer required official approval, but dwellings or warehouses—which in Japan have always been regarded as distinct from the land on which they stand—might ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... came here the other day and brought with him a poem in bronze lacquer, as he called it. He read it aloud—the whole ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... fact that all but our Japanese friend were unaccustomed to chopsticks, forks were placed on the table as well as the little sticks that the Orientals use so deftly. At each place was a beautiful lacquer tray, about twelve by eighteen inches, a pair of chopsticks, a fork and a teaspoon. Before the meal was over several of us became quite expert in using ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... about the boulders. Those are fellows indeed! They could tell us something worth hearing, if they only knew how to talk. It's really a pleasure now and then to become a mere nothing, especially when a man is as highly placed as I am. And then to think that we all, even with patent lacquer, are nothing more than insects of a moment on that ant-hill the earth, though we may be insects with stars and garters, places and offices! One feels quite a novice beside these venerable million-year-old boulders. On ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... brilliant green. So was her spectacularly filled halter. So were her tight short-shorts, her lipstick, and the lacquer on her finger-and toe-nails. As she strolled into the Main of the starship, followed hesitantly by the other girl, she drove a mental probe at the black-haired, powerfully-built man seated ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... the bride and lead her to her dressing-room. Here she finds her own property, which has been brought to her future home during the day. Toilet-stands and cabinets and the ceremonial towel-rack are prominently displayed. On a tall clothes-horse of gilt lacquer are hung her silk robes and the other articles of her wardrobe, which are bridal gifts. Over the doorway, in a gilt rack, glitters the long spear or halberd to the dexterous use of which all Japanese ladies of good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... yellow ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper hukas, silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from collar-bone ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... room was filled with things which Grandfather had brought home from his travels all over the world. There were heavy, dark red tables carved with all kinds of flowers and animals, bright silk cushions, little ebony tabourets with brass trays upon them, curious vases and lacquer boxes from China and Japan. On the mantel was a beautiful tree of pink coral in a glass case, and beside it were wonderful shells and little elephants carved from ivory. On the walls were bits of embroidery framed and covered ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... are not a destructive people, their paper does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them a different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to a monotonous convention to merit the serious study of races that have produced Cotman and Corot. ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... An-t'o-man]. This is a group of two islands in the middle of the sea, one of them being large, the other small; the latter is quite uninhabited. The large one measures seventy li in circuit. The natives on it are of a colour resembling black lacquer; they eat men alive, so that sailors dare not anchor ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a stern cold glare, and a stern old song:— "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."... With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp. Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine. With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... strong lye of wood-ashes, which you may strengthen with soap-lees; put in your brass work, and the lacquer will immediately come off; then have ready a pickle of aquafortis and water, strong enough to take off the dirt; wash it immediately in clean water, dry it well, and ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... of Ieyasu, the illustrious Shogun and founder of the Tokugawa dynasty and, like the other great temple and mausoleum of his grandson, Iemitzu (farther on), was erected in the seventeenth century, at a time when the art of building shrines was at its perfection, as was the work in lacquer and bronze, wood carving and decorative painting. Every detail is perfect, and the great predominance of red and gold lacquer with its setting of green produced a striking effect, but without being in the least garish. Indeed, the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... Japanese bureau, dishonored and forlorn, standing amongst rusty bedsteads, sorry china, and all the refuse of homes dead and desolate. The bureau pleased him in spite of its grime and grease and dirt. Inlaid mother-of-pearl, the gleam of lacquer dragons in red gold, and hits of curious design shone through the film of neglect and ill-usage, and when the woman of the shop showed him the drawers and well and pigeon-holes, he saw that it would be an apt instrument ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... beautiful of all varnishes is lacquer, much used in China and Japan. It is made from the juice of the lacquer tree, (Rhus vernicifera) which is tapped during the summer months. The juice is strained and evaporated and then mixed with various substances, such ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... and why Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to die unwed, and—and—and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer muzzle toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more—having travelled half the world over to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... plural, and the Z in Chintz is no doubt a perversion, through misunderstanding, of the terminal S. Lac is another Indian word which has retained its own meaning, but it has gone beyond it and given rise to a verb "to lacquer." ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... I do," said Chinn, who had the chronicle of the Book of Chinn by heart. It lies in a worn old ledger on the Chinese lacquer table behind the piano in the Devonshire home, and the children are allowed to look at ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper's clock, smothered with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be manuscript articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... who in Plenty's lavish lap hast roll'd, And every year with new delight hast told, Thou, who, recumbent on the lacquer'd barge, Hast dropt down joy's gay stream of pleasant marge, Thou mayst extol life's calm untroubled sea, The storms of misery never ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... bay on the bank of the flooding river—a silent, deserted place of sanddunes and small bills. When a ship is in sight, some poor folk come and spread out the red lacquer that helps their scanty subsistence, and the people from the passing ship land and barter and in a few minutes are gone on their busy way and silence settles down once more. They neither know nor care that, near ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... reception-rooms. Finally, he reached her boudoir, which was as quiet as a tomb, as warm as an alcove, and in which one jostled against the upholstered edging of furniture in the midst of objects of every sort placed here and there—chiffoniers, screens, bowls, and trays made of lacquer, or shell, or ivory, or malachite, expensive trifles, to which fresh additions were frequently made. Amongst single specimens of these rarities might be noticed three Etretat rollers which were used as paper-presses, and a Frisian cap hung ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... pint of alcohol, an ounce of turmeric powder, two drams of arnatto, and two drams of saffron. Agitate the mixture during seven days, and filter it into a clean bottle. Now add three ounces of clean seed-lac, and agitate the bottle every day for fourteen days. When the lacquer is used, the pieces of brass if large are to be first warmed, so as to heat the hand, and the varnish is to be applied with a brush. Smaller pieces may be dipped in the varnish, and then drained by holding them for a minute over the bottle. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... full of strange curves and low furniture with curved backs. It was all Eastern, as was the first floor of the house. Maria understood with a sort of intuition that this was necessary. The walls were covered with Eastern hangings, tables of lacquer stood about filled with squat bronzes and gemlike ivory carvings. The hangings were all embroidered in short curve effects. Maria realized that her hostess, in this room, made more of a harmony than she herself. She felt ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her American acquaintance, or of making acquaintance with such Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood, in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these accumulations. ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... tidy and wear what they probably would describe as European clothes, trousers and long cutaway coats and white turndown collars. Some have grey pot hats, with a round moulding instead of a brim, but their ordinary hat is something like a mitre in black lacquer, and it does suggest heat! They all have very brainy-looking heads from the youth upwards, and wear glasses over eyes that have no quickness—as if they could count but couldn't see—and they constantly move their long, weakly hands in somewhat purposeless angular fashion; the women ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... winked at Sara as he brought out the buttons for Avrillia's inspection. They looked very much like ordinary buttons, except that they were, of course, more intelligent-looking, and they were on a pink card instead of a white one; also, they were in a shiny lacquer box, the lid of which was ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... of the well-to-do Chinese merchants are filled with the richest of silks, the rarest of teas and the most artistic of bric-a-brac, the carvings in ivory and fancy lacquer work being especially noticeable, but close to them in the narrow streets are the abodes of vice and squalor, and squalor of the sort that reeks in the nostrils and leaves a bad taste for hours afterward in the mouths of the sight-seer. At the time of our visit both ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... flutter was heard. Suddenly the great tapestry curtains which overhung the door parted, and there appeared, first of all, an usher, clad in red velvet and carrying a golden wand; then came two golden-haired pages, also clad in red velvet and carrying a flat black-lacquer box on a velvet cushion. Last of all came an elderly man dressed in black, and carrying a golden perch on which sat a fine green parrot. On reaching the centre of the hall, the parrot flapped its wings, arranged an upstart ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... pearl burned a solitary lamp, a curious affair in filigree of brass, furnishing what illumination there was. Its closely shaded rays made vaguely visible walls dark with books, tier upon tier climbing to the ceiling; chairs of odd shape, screens of glowing lacquer; tables and stands supporting caskets of burning cinnabar, of ivory, of gold, of kaleidoscopic cloisonne; trays heaped high with unset jewels; cabinets crowded with rare objects of Eastern art; squat shapes of neglected gods ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the herd, they had a sense of honor not surpassed by the people of any nation; but commerce, the destruction of the castes of samurai, heimin, and eta, the plunging of a military people into business and competition with Western cunning, and the lacquer of Christianity which had done little more than Occidentalize to a considerable degree a few thousands, without giving them the practice of the golden rule, or an appreciation of the Sermon on the Mount, had robbed the Japanese of an ancient code of morality and honor, and replaced it ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... this, he is to have two rose pots of old Wheldon ware for me—they will contain electrically lighted flowers—like old-fashioned bouquets. I wish you and aunty would drive out to the arts-and-crafts shop and bid on the red lacquer cabinet and the French clock that is in stock; I am sure no one has bought them. I could not decide whether I wanted them or not until now, and I must have them. They will tone ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis- lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 250 To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge 255 Over ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... must, you must. You can't refuse! It has been my dream all this time to drink tea with you here just once—just once. To serve you on this little table and hand you the basket with cakes! Do you see this little lacquer table, with the lovely birds of inlaid mother-of-pearl? I had that given to me last Christmas for the especial purpose of serving you tea on it. For I said to myself: 'He is accustomed to the highest elegance.' And you are here and are going to refuse? No, no, that's ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... preparation that went on in the yashiki (mansion) of Lord Long-legs for a whole week previous to starting. Suffice it to say that clothes were washed and starched, and dried on a board, to keep them from shrinking; trunks and baskets were packed; banners and umbrellas were put in order; the lacquer on the brass ornaments; shields and swords and spears were all polished; and every little item was personally examined by the daimio's chief inspector. This functionary was a black-and-white-legged mosquito, who, on account of his long nose, could pry into a thing further and see it easier than ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... dress. The maid did not come. She rang again and again; apparently the bell was broken. She finished dressing and went out into the huge, grandly and gaudily furnished salon. Harding was at a carved old-gold and lacquer desk, writing. As she entered ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... obtained from Korea and China. Gold coin is said to have been first issued under the Emperor Junnin (A.D. 759-765). An observatory was established for the inspection of the stars in connection with the new department of astrology. The cultivation of the lacquer tree and the mulberry and the raising of silk-worms were still further encouraged and extended. Cremation was first practised about A.D. 700 in the case of a Buddhist priest who left directions that his body should be burned. Since that ...
— Japan • David Murray
... you at once that our Occident has much to learn from this remote civilization, not only in matters of art and taste, but in matters likewise of [9] economy and utility. It is no barbarian fancy that appeals to you in those amazing porcelains, those astonishing embroideries, those wonders of lacquer and ivory and bronze, which educate imagination in unfamiliar ways. No: these are the products of a civilization which became, within its own limits, so exquisite that none but an artist is capable of judging its manufactures,—a civilization that can be termed imperfect only by those ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... Varney, "being such a fellow as thyself, only lacking, I suppose, thy present humour of hypocrisy, which lies as thin over thy hard, ruffianly heart as gold lacquer upon rusty iron—did he, I say, bring the saintly, sighing Tressilian ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... altar, and indeed all that I should regard as properly the temple, are protected by a screen of coarsely-netted iron wire. This holy of holies is full of shrines and gods, gigantic candlesticks, colossal lotuses of gilded silver, offerings, lamps, lacquer, litany books, gongs, drums, bells, and all the mysterious symbols of a faith which is a system of morals and metaphysics to the educated and initiated, and an idolatrous superstition to the masses. In this interior the light was ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... placed many objects from the Royal, Museum, notably a large collection of ancient weapons, drums, cymbals, temple gongs, howdahs, some wonderful examples of mother-of-pearl work, hammered silver of antique designs, old lacquer, enormous elephant tusks, ancient theatrical costumes and properties, and portraits of Their Majesties the King and the Queen and His ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... utilitarian purpose in supplying commerce with a rich orange-yellow dye-wood known as young fustic. All this tribe of shrubs and trees contain resinous, milky juice, drying dark like varnish, which in a Japanese species is transformed by the clever native artisans into their famous lacquer. With a commercial instinct worthy of the Hebrew, they guard this ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... storerooms, and there they could not admire enough the profusion and magnificence of the tapestries, beds, sofas, cabinets, tables, and stands. There were mirrors in which they could view themselves from top to toe, some with frames of plate glass, others with frames of silver and gilt lacquer, that were the most superb and beautiful things that had ever been seen. They were loud and persistent in their envy of their friend's good fortune. She, on the other hand, derived little amusement from the sight of all these riches, the reason being that she was ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... state of things endures, a man is not induced to sacrifice the best years of his life to win a fortune for his dotage. His tastes, and, more to the point still, his wife's, remain inexpensive. He likes to see his flat or villa furnished with much red plush upholstery and a profusion of gilt and lacquer. But that is his idea; and maybe it is in no worse taste than is a mixture of bastard Elizabethan with imitation Louis XV, the whole lit by electric light, and smothered with photographs. Possibly, he will ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... of this charming dwelling harmonized with its exterior. The salon, floored entirely with iron-wood, was painted in a style that suggested the beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black panels edged with gold, birds of every color, foliage of impossible greens, and fantastic oriental designs glowed and shimmered. The dining-room was entirely sheathed in Northern woods carved and cut in open-work like the beautiful Russian chalets. The ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... It was one of those days of the American autumn when the air is shot with gold, when there is gold in the light, gold on the foliage, gold on the grass, gold on all surfaces, gold in all shadows, and a gold sheen in the sky itself. Red gold like a rich lacquer overlay the trunks of the occasional pines, and pale-yellow gold, beaten and thin, shimmered along the pendulous garlands of the American elms, where they caught the sun. It was a windless morning and a silent one; the sound of a hammer ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... 99, Museum No. 1 at Kew, there is a selection of small useful and ornamental articles made in Japan of Keyaki wood. Those manufactured from ornamental Keyaki (which is simply gnarled stems or roots, or pieces cut tangentially), and coated with the transparent lacquer for which the Japanese an so famous, are particularly handsome. In the museum library is also a book, the Japanese title of which is given below—"Handbook of Useful Woods," by E. Kinch. Professor ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... ago—and I cannot repeat one of them. I could learn them, of course, by an effort. But that is not the way man desires to remember music and poetry. It must come singing into his head and heart—and remain there without his effort. Here is a "Lacquer Print" called Sunshine. It is indeed vivid, though (quite properly, of course) a little garden pool to ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... his father's woodshed. He was not, unfortunately, shocked by wine and women. But he was bored by box-trees. There was a smugly clipped box-tree on either side of the carriage entrance, the leaves like cheap green lacquer in the glare of the arc-light, which brought out all the artificiality of the gray-and-black cinder drive. He felt that five pilgrimages to even the best of box-trees were enough. It would be perfectly unreasonable for a free man to come here to stare at box-trees a sixth time. "All right," ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... huge rooms she had chosen for her own daily use, by the well-tended fire in its shining grate, she had created an agreeable corner where she sat in a chair marvellous for ease and comfort, enclosed from draughts by a fire screen of antique Chinese lacquer, a table by her side and all she required within her reach. Upon the table stood a silver bell and, at its sound, her companion, her reader, her maid or her personally trained footman, came and went quietly and promptly as if summoned ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... jade bangles; curiously packed incense-sticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets; the devil-masks of overnight and a wall full of peacock-blue draperies; gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable lacquer altars; Russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell china sets in quaint octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes—from Japan of all places in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the house, Princess Sophia Vasilievna, was a recumbent lady. It was the eighth year that, when visitors were present, she lay in lace and ribbons, surrounded with velvet, gilding, ivory, bronze, lacquer and flowers, never going out, and only, as she put it, receiving intimate friends, i.e., those who according to her idea stood out from ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... proprieties of the occasion restrain me from denouncing them and their author as I feel at liberty to do in the walks of private life. Mr. President, according to that Christian code which I have been taught, there is no atonement in the thin lacquer of public courtesy, or of private ceremonial observance, for the offence one man does another when he violates that provision of the Decalogue, which, speaking to him, says, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' and which means ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... architecture. Of such castles I visited as many as I could. In all of them, as though by some enchantment, the present had become the past. The unrest of western Europe in the modern sense was dead. In dining rooms trays of the finest Japanese lacquer formed a background for oaken tables into which the beard of Barbarossa might have grown. Knights in armor kept watch over billiard tables whose green baize had survived the fadings of two hundred years. For me this half-visionary world ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... adventure to make an expedition there, and the owners allow us to poke in back rooms from which we unearth wondrous treasures in the way of old brass vases; queer, slender-necked scent-bottles still faintly smelling of roses; old lacquer boxes, and bits of rich embroidery. I am becoming a Shylock in the way I beat down prices. I shouldn't wonder a bit when I go home and am ruffling it once more in Bond Street if, when told the price of a thing is a guinea, I laugh in a jocular ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... forgotten gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... room. He looked at the delicate adornment of the walls, the curtains of Lyons damask, the crystal girandoles, the toys in porcelain of Saxony and Sevres, in bronze and ivory and Chinese lacquer, crowding the tables and cabinets of inlaid wood. Overhead floated a rosy allegory by Luca Giordano; underfoot lay a carpet of the royal manufactory of France; and through the open windows he heard the plash ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... calm impartiality how insidiously the rust has assailed the outer polish of the lacquer; perceive here upon the beneath part of wood the ineffaceable depression of a deeply-pointed blow; ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... go running after, Obeying all your whims— For the liquor of your laughter And the lacquer of your limbs. ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... years back. Its furniture, for the most part, was of the Restoration, of simple and massive oak blackened by age, which I ever fancied better than the Frenchy baubles of tables and chairs with spindle legs, and cabinets of glass and gold lacquer which were then making their way into the fine mansions of our town. The house was full of twists and turns, and steps up and down, and nooks and passages and queer hiding-places which we children ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... workers in many ways. Their modern embroideries (the old shawl manufacture is totally extinct) are beautiful and artistic. Their wood-carving, almost always executed in rich brown walnut, is excellent; and their old papier-mache lacquer is very good. The tendency, however, is unfortunately to abandon their own admirable designs, and assimilate or copy Western ideas as conveyed in very ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... are ornaments of jade and lacquer, And the bamboo pipe and the hap-heem that I have laid aside, And the written leaves containing my verses. But there are no writing tables, no ink and no brushes. For now my verses will be ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... its substance I could not tell. It was as though built of the lacquer of the gems whose colors it held. And beautiful, wondrously, incredibly beautiful it was—an immense bubble of froth of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... they used to play I' the San-ju-san-jen Do, They filled a little lacquer tray With powders in a row, Dry dust of flowers from Tashiro To Mount Daimugenzan, Dry little heaps of dust, but O ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the book reflects the minor arts in vogue at the period of its execution. Often in the illumination we may detect these popular local industries. We see mosaic enamelling, wood-and stone-carving, and lacquer-work, and as we approach the Renaissance, even gem-cutting and the delicate craft of the medallist. In Venice and the Netherlands we have the local taste for flower-culture; in Germany we find sculpture in wood and stone; in France the productions ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... he said, stealthily wetting his finger and rubbing it on the knobby bulbs. "That's genuine old lacquer; you can't get it nowadays. It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his old aunt. It was seldom he was so confidential. "I wouldn't mind having it myself," ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... roof of the sanctum, which is formed of beams in a very curious pattern. A frieze of medallions of birds, gilded and painted, runs around the top of the wall. The shrine dates back for two and one-half centuries and is of rich gold lacquer. The bronze incense burner, in the form of a lion, bears the date of 1635. The great war drum of Ieyasu, the first of the Tokugawa shoguns, lies upon a richly decorated stand. Back of the temple is the octagonal hall, which houses the tomb of the second shogun. This tomb is the largest ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... temple is exhibited articles from one thousand to four thousand years old—old bronzes, and arms, and first attempts at pottery and lacquer. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... the taste of my old home," Eliza answered. "My new house up the river is furnished throughout in real oriental red lacquer. You must come and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... something of the nature of glue; and it is then put into a mould. Sometimes to make it stronger for large mouldings, bits of canvas or even wire are also used. The best papier mache is made of pure wood cellulose. The beautiful boxes and trays covered with lacquer which the Japanese and Chinese make are formed of this; but it has many much humbler uses than these. Paper screws are employed in ornamental wood work, and if a hole is begun for such a screw, it will twist its way into soft wood as well as steel would ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... the piece of wood. "It's not French polish, but I haven't seen varnish as good as this. Except that it's clear and shows the grain, it's more like some rare old Japanese lacquer." ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... there about the room. A dictaphone in a case was in a corner, but beside it was a little table on which were set out some rare bits of old Chelsea. There was also a gramophone, but it was enclosed in a superb case of genuine old black-and-gold lacquer. The very books in their shelves carried on this contrast of business with recreation. For while one set of shelves contained row upon row of technical works, company reports, and all manner of business reference books bound in ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... vehicles they mount the sky: When Jove would some fair nymph inveigle, He comes full gallop on his eagle; Though Venus be as light as air, She must have doves to draw her chair; Apollo stirs not out of door, Without his lacquer'd coach and four; And jealous Juno, ever snarling, Is drawn by peacocks in her berlin: But we can fly where'er we please, O'er cities, rivers, hills, and seas: From east to west the world we roam, And in all climates are at home; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... that tea Dominic Iglesias was fated not to drink. A ring at the bell, a parley at the front door, followed by the advent of an elderly parlourmaid bearing a card on a small lacquer tray. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... beautiful—one of the most beautiful things in nature—shining with incomparable crystalline whiteness. So delicate is it, however, for so great is the surface it exposes, that it is generally rapidly deteriorated by exposure to the air. It may be protected to some extent by lacquering with pale lacquer, but it loses some of its brilliancy and purity in the process. The deposit is generally scratch-brushed or burnished down to a regular ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... know that the sensation of light or color, if not too weak or too violent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the glittering, shining object, so long as it is not painful, is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer, polish, testify to this taste, from the most primitive to the most civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright, nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing. The single colors have been the object of comparatively little study. Experiment seems to show ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the Kakemonos of Japan, painted screens and vases of the Satsuma ware, the art of making which was taught to the Japanese by the Coreans, although now those who were formerly masters in the art cannot produce it. Some Coreans also possess valuable specimens of lacquer work, both of Chinese and Japanese origin, as well as a rougher kind of native production. None of these heirlooms are, however, ever brought to light, and it is only on rare and very grand occasions, such as marriages, deaths, or national rejoicings, that one or ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... temple is imposing it is usually because of its bulk and mystery, whereas these buildings are lighthearted and fairy-like: heaps of red and yellow fruit with twining leaves and tendrils that have grown by magic. Nor is there much resemblance to Japanese architecture. There also, lacquer and gold are employed to an unusual extent but the flourishes, horns and finials which in Burma spring from every corner and projection are wanting and both Japanese and Chinese artists are more sparing and reticent. They distribute ornament so as to emphasize and lead up ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... an Autumn Evening The Paper Windmill The Red Lacquer Music-Stand Spring Day The Dinner-Party Stravinsky's Three Pieces "Grotesques", for String Quartet Towns in Colour Red Slippers Thompson's Lunch Room—Grand Central Station An Opera House Afternoon Rain ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... curved blades and sharp points for small flies and one pair with small straight blades. A needle pushed into a stick, for picking out hackles that are wound under, and for putting lacquer on the finished head, completes ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... curtain-rods of silver-lacquer, and the abundant silver of the dressing-table gave a frosty contrast which was necessary in a room of so warm a general tone. This is an example of very delicate and truly artistic treatment of stencil-work, and one can easily see how ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... X——'s library of several rooms, and at the limit of that the tea room for the tea ceremonies. Our host is not one of the new rich who buy sets at a million dollars for performing this ceremony. He laughs at that. But there is a gold lacquer table which is like transfixed sunshine, and there are other pieces of old furniture, which are priceless now, and which have come down in his family. You would be amused to see us at breakfast, which O-Tei, the maid assigned to us, serves in our sun parlor. First we have ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... Han period have also been found in tombs. We see especially ladies and gentlemen of society, with richly ornamented, elegant, expensive clothing that is very reminiscent of the clothing customary to this day in Japan. There are also artistic representations of human figures on lacquer caskets. While sculpture was not strongly developed, the architecture of the Han must have been magnificent and technically highly complex. Sculpture and temple architecture received a great stimulus with the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... have introduced from China some of the most ornamental plants in our gardens, as Wistaria, Diervilla, Kerria, Incarvillea, Deutzia, Primula sinensis, Hemerocallis, &c. The peach and several oranges are natives of China. The varnish tree (Rhus vernicifera), from which lacquer is obtained; the tallow tree (Sapium sebiferum); the white mulberry, on which silkworms are fed; and the tea plant were all first utilized by the Chinese. The Chinese have also numerous medicinal plants, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Honorable betrothed one messenger bring to me large blue No. 1 Lacquer box, in box two gold and jade bracelets, most fine, most rare; when I try bracelets on arms all girls come look see, all say - "Too excellently fine," "Too dazzlingly beautiful," "Too costly," "All same high Official lady," ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... kept saying inside him. "Anything is better than that." Better throw himself in the river, even, than go back. He could see the olive-drab clothes in a heap among the dry bullrushes on the river bank.... He thought of himself crashing naked through the film of ice into water black as Chinese lacquer. And when he climbed out numb and panting on the other side, wouldn't he be able to take up life again as if he had just been born? How strong he would be if he could begin life a second time! How madly, how ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... sooner had they passed a huge lacquer screen, newly placed in position, and turned into the great corridor, than Undershaw exclaimed in amazement. Melrose was striding along toward the south wing. Behind them, screened off, lay regions no longer visible ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... viands. They ate everything except the flesh of oxen or horses. In serving meals, tables of Chinese form ceased altogether to be used, edibles being placed on a tray which stood about four inches high. These trays and cups, and the bowls and plates ranged on them, showed great refinement, rich lacquer, silver, and gold being ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... here the Capricorns collect the chalky paste which becomes the stone lid for the entrance to the cell; here caterpillars keep in reserve the gums and powders with which they strengthen the cocoon; hence the Hymenoptera draw the lacquer which they employ to upholster their silken edifice. And now we find the Lily-beetle using it as a store for frothy cement.[1] What an obliging ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... passage beyond. This brought him past the still-room, the steward's room, the housekeeper's room, and the butler's pantry. All were in most glorious confusion; in the latter, Captain Cutitfat's lacquer-toed, lavender-coloured dress-boots were reposing in the silver soup tureen, and Captain Bouncey's varnished pumps were stuffed into a wine-cooler. The last detachment of empty bottles stood or lay about the floor, commingling ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... from the tree. Elise had a great many gifts—exquisite trifles sent to her by sophisticated friends—a wine-jug of seventeenth-century Venetian glass, a bag of Chinese brocade with handles of carved ivory, a pair of ancient silver buckles, a box of rare lacquer filled with Oriental sweets, a jade pendant, a crystal ball on a bronze base—all of them lovely, all to be exclaimed over; but the things I wanted were drums and horns and candy canes, and tarletan bags, and pop-corn chains, and ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... perhaps pride themselves on doing so. But if the houses of even the well-to-do are small and inconspicuous, the interiors are of satisfying quality in materials and workmanship, and the family godowns bring forth surprises. Here as elsewhere the guest is served in treasured lacquer and porcelain. (While we are not accustomed in the West to look at the marks on our host's table silver, it is perfect Japanese manners to admire a food bowl by examining the potter's marks.) My host hung a rural kakemono in my room, one day a fine old study of poultry, another an ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... a long time to choose their house-furnishings: there was a piece of black-and-gold lacquer; a set of painted panels; a Persian rug, swept by the tails of two haughty peacocks; some cloud-gray Chinese porcelains; a set of Du Barry vases; a crystal-and-enamel box, designed probably for some sacred purpose, but contributed by Pete as an excellent receptacle for chocolates ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... her complexion, which consisted chiefly of wrinkles, as has been said; but she always had shielded her face from the fire, and she always would—it was the proper thing to do. The parlor gloomed and lightened around her, the shifting light touching here a bit of gold lacquer, there a Venetian mirror or an ivory statuette. The fire purred and crackled softly; there was no other sound. The tiny figure in the ebony chair was as motionless as one of the Indian idols that grinned at her ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... it. But within it is a fairy palace, hung with silk draperies, tapestries, and hand-painted curtains; the floors are covered with magnificent rugs from Persia and India, and the reception-room is crowded with treasures of ebony, ivory, lacquer work, and gold and silver. There were two thrones made of silver dragons, with many scales, and studded with jewels. The Sultan did not seem to mind our openly admiring his treasures, and his attendants, who stood about him in gorgeous-colored silks heavy with gold embroideries, were evidently pleased ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... long blue cotton dresses with pagoda sleeves, long, sleek, and greasy hair surmounted by European pot-hats; and beneath these, yellow, worn-out, bloodless, foolish faces. On the floor are a number of little spirit-lamps, little pipes, little lacquer trays, little teapots, little cups-all the accessories and all the remains of a Japanese feast, resembling nothing so much as a doll's tea-party. In the midst of this circle of dandies are three overdressed women, one might say three weird visions, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... tea for him, and some rather strange little spiced cakes on a red lacquer tray. There was much dark blue and vivid red in the room, with white woodwork. Drusilla herself was in unrelieved red. The effect was ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... all Paris, the bridges, the Tuileries, the Louvre, interlaced with trees as black as if they were drawn in India ink on the wavering background of the mist. A broad, very low bed on a platform a few steps above the floor, two or three small lacquer screens with vague fanciful decorations in gold, denoting, as did the double doors and the heavy woollen carpet, a dread of cold carried to excess, chairs of various styles, long chairs and low chairs, placed at random, all well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous shapes, composed ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... dressed with marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white flower at his lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye. He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a thorn-tree, projected on either ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... be taken as twenty-seven square inches, a quantity considered as sufficiently large for the comparison of different substances. Great care was taken in finishing well the inducing surfaces of the ball h and sphere a, a; and no varnish or lacquer was applied to them, or to any part of the metal of ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... to leave the reviews unread. No one else living had understood Pleydon; and when descriptions of his life spoke of the austerity in his later years, his fanatical aversion to women, Linda thought of the brittle glove in the gilt-lacquer box. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... set off towards the lake. Below, on the water, lanterns were coming alight, faint ghosts of warm flame floating in the pallor of the first twilight. The earth was spread with darkness, like lacquer, overhead was a pale sky, all primrose, and the lake was pale as milk in one part. Away at the landing stage, tiniest points of coloured rays were stringing themselves in the dusk. The launch was being illuminated. All round, shadow ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... chimney-piece above stood a foggy mirror and a modern clock with an inlaid wooden case; Fraisier had picked it up at an execution sale, together with the tawdry imitation rococo candlesticks, with the zinc beneath showing through the lacquer ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... motor or aeroplane, but borne along merely by his own outspread arms. And everywhere he looked, on every hill and in every hollow, he saw the horns of innumerable talking-machines growing out of the ground. Thousands upon thousands of those familiar cornucopias of bright lacquer with gilt edges pointed their open mouths up at him. And each one was the center of a swarming ant-hill of busy gunners carrying shot ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... whom the Marshalls now saw for the first time, and who was in every way a specimen novel in their limited experience of children. During their first encounter, the well-groomed, white-linen-clad boy with his preternaturally clean face, his light-brown hair brushed till it shone like lacquer, his polished nails and his adult appendage of a tutor, aroused a contempt in Judith's mind which was only equaled by her astonishment. On that occasion he sat upright in a chair between his stepmother and his tutor, looking intently ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... there are no strains upon a mortise lock, it is quite as good as if it was of wrought iron. There is no unnecessary grinding, but the iron is japanned, and the japan is as much superior to the English compound as is the lacquer ware of the Japanese to that which is executed in Birmingham and palmed upon the ignorant buyer as Japanese work. In fact, as you can see for yourselves, the English japan looks almost like gas tar beside the American. This American lock is a two-lever, and there ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... they distantly conjecture How we use their architecture, Ousting the indignant Joss For a pampered Flirt or Floss, Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese, Lapped in purple and proud ease— They might read their god's reproof Here on blister'd wall and roof; Scaling lacquer, dinted bells, Floor befoul'd of weed and shells, Where, as erst the tabid Curse Brooded over Pelops' hearse, Squats the sea-cow, keeping house, Sibylline, gelatinous. Where is Carlo? Tell, O tell, Echo, from this fluted shell, In whose concave ear the tides ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... collection, but I can wait. And there is meanwhile nothing in this room that is not good, very good of its type." Sometimes in more expansive musings he would take out of its brocaded bag a wooden tobacco box artfully incrusted with lacquer, pewter, and mother of pearl, the work of the great Korin, and would declare aloud, "Nobody has anything better than this, no museum, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... same love of luxury and the bizarre even in the furnishing of his bedroom, which was a black-and-white room with furniture of Chinese lacquer and teakwood. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... creature, in regard to these particulars? Well; if such a day never come again, then I perceive much else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of insight will never come; heroic purity of heart and of eye; noble pious valor, to amend us and the age of bronze and lacquer, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacquer age, of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies and mendacities, will have to run its course, till ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the shoulders of the bearers was rich with the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon—lacquer on cedar. The cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace were stiff with ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... the flame blazing on his hearth as in the depth of winter, the duke was shivering in his blue firs, between his little screens, and as he wrote his name on divers documents for a clerk from his office, on a low lacquered table that stood so near the fire that the lacquer came off in scales, he kept holding his benumbed fingers to the blaze, which might have scorched them on the surface without restoring circulation and ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... petticoats, and pigtails, that caused Lucy next to open her eyes upon a cane sofa, with cushions ornamented with figures in coloured silks? The floor of the room was of shining inlaid wood; there were beautifully woven mats all round; stands made of red lacquer work, and seats of cane and bamboo; and there was a round window, through which could be seen a beautiful garden, full of flowering shrubs and trees, a clear pond lined with coloured tiles in the middle, and over the wall the gilded roof of a pagoda, like ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man too,—for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature, which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer 'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done over blue)—and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a 'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite an actor ... I forget ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... of the town, though not of any particular house there; dwelling, presumably, out of doors, in the street, between heaven and earth, like that Gilbert de Guermantes, of whom I could see, in the stained glass of the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the 'other side' in dull black lacquer, if I raised my eyes to look for him, when I was going to Camus's for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust |
