"Lacquer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the important thing. If the heart be awry, what though your skin be fair, your nose aquiline, your hair beautiful? All these strike the eye alone, and are utterly useless. It is as if you were to put horse-dung into a gold-lacquer luncheon-box. This is what is called a fair outside, deceptive ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... presents sent to him by old pupils, Indian jars and cabinets, brass lotahs and trays, specimens of weapons from Delhi, and ivory carvings; while from pupils who had gone to China and Japan, came bronzes, porcelain, screens, and lacquer ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... like the taste of my old home," Eliza answered. "My new house up the river is furnished throughout in real oriental red lacquer. You must ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... 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 last New Year's eve I was reading ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... cabin I found the table covered with silks, satins, crepe, shawls, combs, articles of lacquer-ware, jewels, silk stockings, slippers, spangled tulle, handkerchiefs, lace, fans. The girls' eyes were sparkling. Chonita clapped her hands and ran around the table, pressing to her lips the beautiful white things she quickly segregated, running her hand eagerly over the little slippers, ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 leather, on another ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... connection with women's clothes. I sent in my story, but unfortunately my friend forgot to put me next, for I got neither cash nor manuscript. The next time I passed the empty store, I stepped in to explain, but the artist had a black eye, and his own interest was so engrossed in Chinese lacquer-work and a stormy divorce case he had coming on shortly, that I was struck dumb. What was a short story in comparison with such issues? And I knew he had no more opinion of me as an author than I had of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... were set couches of black japanned wood, upon which rested flat mattresses covered in the same green as the walls. On these silk cushions in black and vermilion were piled. The only other furniture consisted of low tables in black lacquer, one beside every couch. On each of these rested a lacquered bowl of Chinese red, obviously for the receipt of cigarette ashes. A similar but larger bowl on a table near the door was filled with green orchids. One large green silk rug—innocent of pattern—invited the entering ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... 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 organ is ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... working well; but its lowering influences on the individual mind cannot be doubted: that an intelligent man should for a life-time be doomed to watch a valve, or twist pin-heads, or wind cotton, or lacquer coffin-nails, cannot be improving; and while I grant great evil in my desultory excesses, still I may make some use of that argument in the converse, and plead that it is good to exercise the mind on all things. Thus, in my assumed metier of authorship, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... find an answer to the question in the varnish with which the silken fabric is impregnated? I hesitate to say yes and I hesitate to say no, for a host of cocoons are coated with a similar lacquer though deprived of communication with the outside air. All said, without being able at present to account for its necessity, I admit that the apex of the Anthidia is a breathing-aperture. I bequeath to the future the task of telling ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 joyously ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... and peonies; and 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, of which ginseng and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... about the Chinese screens, Aunt?" said I. "The gold lacquer would have gone very well ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the universal language of the graphic arts. Any human being, in fact, who has developed a sensitiveness to artistic beauty will receive a measure of delight from the work of Japanese masters. A few strokes of the brush upon silk, a bit of lacquer work, the decoration of a sword-hilt, are enough to set his eye dancing. But the expert collector soon passes beyond this general enthusiasm into a quite particular interest in the handicraft of special artists,—a Motonobu, let us say, or a Sesshiu. The ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... 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
... of them, seated in a circle on the ground, attired in 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 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 at the Imperial College of Agriculture, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... him," 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," he added; "you can always get your ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... meet, and for the purpose of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood, in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these accumulations. She was constantly ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... does a brisk business, I 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 ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... 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 ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... everyday use and life the qualities of art could be perceived and enjoyed. It may be that it was thanks to them that art had any qualities and ever existed at all. For, however much the temple, cathedral, statue, fresco, the elaborate bronze or lacquer or coloured print, may have reacted on the form, the proportions and linear rhythms and surface arrangements, of all common useful objects; it was in the making of these common useful objects (first making by man of genius and thousandfold minute adaptation by respectful mediocrity) ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... of the proverbial Russian, though in a more scientific sense, that if you scratch him you will find the ancestral Tartar. But it is no less true that the descendants of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish of which their own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection. The surface was perfected after the substance was formed. Our word finish, with its double meaning, expresses both ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... Palace called the Seir-y[o]den; and upon these mattings were placed four tables of offerings to the Star-deities. Besides the customary food-offerings, there were placed upon these tables rice-wine, incense, vases of red lacquer containing flowers, a harp and flute, and a needle with five eyes, threaded with threads of five different colors. Black-lacquered oil-lamps were placed beside the tables, to illuminate the feast. In another part of the grounds a tub of water was so placed as to reflect ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... and mosquito net. Behind was a bathroom having a corrugated cistern upon the cross beams which gave force for a shower. The towels and appointments were specklessly clean. When Birnier appeared he found zu Pfeiffer sprawled in the lounge. On a red lacquer tray upon a great war drum, covered with the striped skin of a zebra, was a crystal liqueur set and a large silver ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... training was drawing to a close. The finishing touches in the various departments that had come to be considered necessary in modern warfare had been given. With the "putting on the lacquer" the fighting spirit of the men had been sharpened to its keenest edge. They were all waiting impatiently for the order to "go up." The motives underlying that ardour of spirit varied with the temperament, disposition ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... observe, earlier in the day, the book-lined walls of the library were broken, opposite the window, by a panelled alcove where a small table stood, beyond which, against the wall, was a very large and tall grandfather's clock of black and gold lacquer, in imitation of the Chinese designs so popular in ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... 'twixt beautiful grey kid shoes and correctest trousers, a pearly-grey silk handkerchief peeped knowingly from the cuff of his pearly-grey silk shirt by his pearly-grey kid glove, and his little cane was of grey lacquer, and of pearl handle. One could almost have sworn that a pearl-grey smile adorned the scarce-shut mouth of the beautiful modern product of education and civilization, to carry on the so well-devised colour-scheme to the pearly-grey grey-ribboned ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... 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 doubtful ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... 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 in beautifully with ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... congested and dim. The two oriel windows were so draped with curtains of pink and yellow that only a faint light as of the last of a sunset filtered through. The wide spaces were beset with screens in lacquer, odd chairs, Dutch tables, and very many cabinets,—cabinets inlaid with flowers and birds of many colours; cabinets full of shells, agates, corals, and any gaudy stone; cabinets and yet again more cabinets full of Eastern china. In the midst ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... a strange, puzzled look on her face, apparent most to George Hagar. The others only saw the lacquer of amusement, summoned for the ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... white marble, brought from Carrara for the fifth Baron Loudwater at the end of the eighteenth century; 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 ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... 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
... Tale for 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 in State Street ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... harmony with the room, which was low-ceiled, 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 herself large, coarse, and common where she should ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... grass; snow-peaks under the stars, volcanoes, green and black; huge rivers, tumbling streams, waterfalls, lakes, the ocean; hovels and huts of wood or sun-dried bricks, thatched or tiled; marble palaces and baths; red lacquer, golden tiles; saints, kings, conquerors, and, enduring or worshipping these, a myriad generations of peasants through long millenniums, toiling, suffering, believing, in one unchanging course of life, before the dawn ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... up Sacramento Street, where the straight-lined grey business blocks gave way to fantastic pagoda-like buildings gaily decorated in green, red, and yellow. Bits of carved ivory, rich lacquer ware and choice pieces of satsuma and cloisonne appeared in the windows. In quiet, padded shoes, the sallow-faced, almond-eyed throng shuffled by, us; here a man with a delicate lavender lining showing below his blue ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... grandchildren of the buyer, who were ignorant of the immense value of such unrivalled work. Cleverly mended, they are to-day the pride of the great trader's drawing-room. On the mantelpiece there is a large clock in Chinese lacquer, ornamented with gilt bronze, made on a model sent out from Paris in the reign of Louis Quatorze, and representing the Flight of the Hours ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Villalobar, 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 said, between things and sentiments. Lancken entered at last, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... 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
... heavy; pearl grey loses its blue and changes to a muddy white; brown is lifeless and cold; as for deep green, such as emperor or myrtle, it has the same properties as blue and merges into black. There remained, then, the paler greens, such as peacock, cinnabar or lacquer, but the light banishes their blues and brings out their yellows in tones that have a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... edge of the gutter where they stood, a Chinese shoemaker had set out on a lacquer tray his offering to the gods. Red candles bordered it, surrounding little bowls of rice and sweetmeats, a slice of roast pig, a Chinese lily. As the banners approached, certain devout coolies found room on the sidewalk to prostrate themselves. Eleanor, absorbed now in a poetic ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... Monasteries and wiharas Palaces Carvings in stone Ubiquity of the honours shown to goose Delicate outline of Singhalese carvings Temples and their decorations Cave temples of Ceylon The Alu-wihara Moulding in plaster Claim of the Singhalese to the invention of oil painting Lacquer ware of the present day ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... crimson sea, gleaming like that lost lacquer of royal coral and the Flame Dragon's blood which Fu S'cze set upon the bower he built for his stolen sun maiden—that going toward it she might think it the sun itself rising over the summer seas. Unmoved by wave or ripple, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... o'clock. She idly walked Anneli through the various rooms, pointing out to her this and that; and as the little Dresden maid had not been in the Museum before, her eyes were wide open at the sight of such beautiful things. She was shown masses of rich tapestry and cases of Japanese lacquer-work; she was shown collections of ancient jewellery and glass; she went by sunny English landscapes, and was told the story of solemn cartoons. In the midst of it all George Brand appeared; and ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... 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 ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... 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 antique armour stood sentinel over ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... 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 ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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 ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 it ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... civilization more than tolerable. The needed letters were written, various hints for my guidance were thrown out, and I drove back at half-past ten under heavens which were one blaze of stars amidst a dust of nebulae, like the inlaid gold spots amidst a dust of gold on old Japanese lacquer, and through a moist, warm atmosphere laden with the heavy fragrance of innumerable ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... a reverent hand over its painted surface. In 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 ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... towns. The best carvers are at Bhera, Chiniot, Amritsar, and Batala. The European demand has produced at Simla and other places an abundant supply of cheap articles of little merit. The inlaid work of Chiniot and Hoshyarpur is good, as is the lacquer-work of Pakpattan. The papier mache work of Kashmir has much artistic merit (Fig. 55), and some of the repousse silver work ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... 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 have his outer walls painted by the local ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... pheasants for them, 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 ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... 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
... knowledge,—off, alas, crown slipped Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day, Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last —Knowledge, the golden?—lacquered ignorance! As gain—mistrust it! Not as means to gain: Lacquer we learn by: ... The prize is in the process: knowledge means Ever-renewed assurance by defeat That victory is somehow still to reach, But love is victory, the prize itself: Love—trust to! Be rewarded for the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... produced on trays of red lacquer, fish and vegetables of different kinds artistically arranged, but ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... cannot be taken to make the library a pleasant room to live in; it should have everything arranged and adapted for use and comfort, and not be stiff and dreary with any set arrangement. The panels of the cupboard doors may be filled in with Japanese lacquer-work or painted decoration, and here and there, in the recesses, nests of shelves may be fitted with projecting brackets, designed as part of them, for pieces of china, vases of flowers, or busts, and not looking like bats stuck ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... executed in richly marked walnut, frequently enriched with excellent marquetry of woods. Mahogany was the dominating timber in English furniture from the accession of George II. almost to the time of the Napoleonic wars; but many cabinets were made in lacquer or in the bright-hued foreign woods which did so much to give lightness and grace to the British style. The glass-fronted cabinet for China or glass was in high favour in the Georgian period, and for pieces of that type, for which massiveness ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... desired, it may be had by filling the etched parts with enamel tinted by the addition of oil colors, such as are used for enameling bathtubs. After this has dried, smooth it off with pumice stone and water. To keep the metal from tarnishing, cover it with banana-oil lacquer. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... pavilion were 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 Royal ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... enough for you to know. It referred to some correspondence, two measures, a peremptory order to a native chief and two dozen other things. Mrs. Hauksbee gasped as she read, for the first glimpse of the naked machinery of the Great Indian Government, stripped of its casings, and lacquer, and paint, and guard-rails, impresses even the most stupid man. And Mrs. Hauksbee was a clever woman. She was a little afraid at first, and felt as if she had laid hold of a lightning-flash by the tail, and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... stood considering her forlornly for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders, with the brilliant and disarming smile. "The game's up, thanks to my inspired lunacy! But I'm going to trust you not to say that you've seen me. I know about the lacquer chest because I always kept my ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 written ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... The 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
... 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 ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Bushido imposed itself on all above 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 ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... indeed the whole view of this temple of Wrath or Justice, was suggestive of a frightful Inferno, with its rows of demon gods, hideous beyond Western conception, engaged in torturing writhing and bleeding specimens of humanity. Demon masks of ancient lacquer hung from the pillars, naked swords gleamed in motionless hands, and in a deep recess whose 'darkness' was rendered 'visible' by one lamp, was that indescribable horror the executioner of the Lord of Hell, his many brandished arms holding instruments of torture, ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... 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
... 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 ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... girls, save the proud Jennie, thrust themselves out of the windows. A driver with a fine carriage is indeed standing near the Treppel entrance. His brand-new, dashing victoria glistens with new lacquer; at the ends of the shafts two tiny electric lights burn with a yellow light; the tall white horse, with a bare pink spot on the septum of its nose, shakes its handsome head, shifts its feet on the same spot, and pricks up its thin ears; the bearded, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... 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 ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of the essence of good design. With a simple spray of leaves and a bird in flight a Japanese artist will give you the impression that he has completely covered with lovely design the reed fan or lacquer cabinet at which he is working, merely because he knows the exact spot in which to place them. All good design depends on the texture of the utensil used and the use you wish to put it to. One of the first things I saw in an American school of design was a young lady painting a romantic ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... old regime was apparently modified by giving the young lady a chance to refuse. About ten days before the marriage, two ladies are selected by the mother of the young man to carry a peculiar ornament made of ebony and jade, or jade alone, or red lacquer, to the home of the prospective bride. This ornament is called the ju yi, which means "According to my wishes." If the lady receives it into her own hands it signifies her willingness to become his bride; if she rejects it, the negotiations are at an end, though I have never heard of a ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... studded images, five feet high, of 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 and ladles, and portable altars ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... thee well, that lacquer suit, Base flunkey as thou art! Though bright, it never covered brain; Though gilded, ne'er a heart! Rather than wear upon my back Such livery as thine, I'd earn an honest crust, and make The ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... law-defenders of all ages and all lands, in robes and gowns of silks; in armour, in skins, in velvet and ermine—men wearing doublet, jack-coat, pourpoint; men in turban and caftan, men covered with mail of all kinds—armour of leather, of fibre, of lacquer, of quilted silk, of linked steel, Milanaise, iron cuirass; the emblazoned panoply of the Mongol paladins; Timour Melek's greaves of virgin gold; men of all nations and of all ages who fashioned or executed human law, from Moses to Caesar, from ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... parlor had its own slightly pathetic cachet. The walls and ceiling had been painted by rather a bad artist from Florence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the furniture was good of its kind—a strange dark orange lacquer and gilt—and here most of the treasures which had not yet been disposed of for daily bread, were hoarded in cabinets and quaint glass-topped show tables. There were a number of other priceless things ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... 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 process as ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... inside of the lid covering food so offered, the absent beloved is well. But if there be none, he is dead,—because that is a sign that his soul has returned by itself to seek nourishment. O-Toyo found the lacquer thickly beaded with vapor day ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 side ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... 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, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... mats were carried into the 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, each carrying ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... our cushions for breakfast. The serving-girls bring in a small red-lacquered table, not larger or higher than a footstool. Every guest has his own table, and on each are five cups, bowls, and small dishes of porcelain and lacquer, all of them with lids like teapots. These contain raw fish and boiled fish in various forms, omelettes and macaroni, crab soup with asparagus in it, and many other strange viands. When we have partaken ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... 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," - "All ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the 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 ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... carved in ivory by a French craftsman of the fourteenth century. The mystic beauty of Simone Martini, the agonized compassion of the young Bellini, are embodied by Crivelli in forms which have the strength of line and the metallic lustre of old Satsuma or lacquer, and which are no less tempting to the touch. Crivelli must be treated by himself and as the product of stationary, if not reactionary, conditions. Having lived most of his life far away from the main currents of culture, in a province where St. Bernardino had been spending his last energies ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... 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 ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Glebeshire pottery, cheap things but precious, a box plastered with coloured shells, an amber bead necklace, a blue leather writing-case, a photograph of her father as a young clergyman with a beard and whiskers, a faded daguerreotype of her mother, last, but by no means least, a small black lacquer musical-box that played two tunes, "Weel may the Keel row" and "John Peel,"—these ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... 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 watched over ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... for a picture of the Madonna which was to be offered for sale at an auction. As he reached the house he saw at the door four big, well-fed, well-groomed, thoroughbred horses harnessed to a carriage, the black lacquer of which glistened in the sun. The coachman was seated on the box in a kaftan, with a silver belt, and the horses were jingling their silver bells from time ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... legs, and he turned his toes in as he walked. The skirts of his coat were too wide, there was a multitude of wrinkles in his trousers, his necktie bore visible evidence of an unpractised hand. It was as if a daimio had been taken out of one of those cuirasses of iron and lacquer, so like the shell of some monstrous crustacean, and thrust into the clothes of a European waiter. And yet, with all his ungainliness and apparent stupidity there was a glint of malice in his slits of eyes and a sort of ironical cunning about ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... little maids headed by Onoye with tea and refreshments. It was Onoye who served the young Japanese. First she bowed before him until her forehead almost touched the ground. Then she placed a mat for him to sit upon and a low lacquer tray containing tea and rice cakes. But Yoritomo, ignoring these humble services, sat himself in a chair next to Nancy and little Onoye hastened to rectify ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... only, but on every 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, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... had been allowed to keep the key and until to-day she had not opened the lacquer box. Was it quite by accident that she had found it? She was not quite sure it was and she was asking herself questions, as she sat looking at it as it ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... overspread; wrap &c. 225; encase, incase[obs3]; face, case, veneer, pave, paper; tip, cap, bind; bulkhead, bulkhead in; clapboard [U.S.]. coat, paint, varnish, pay, incrust, stucco, dab, plaster, tar; wash; besmear, bedaub; anoint, do over; gild, plate, japan, lacquer, lacker[obs3], enamel, whitewash; parget[obs3]; lay it on thick. overlie, overarch[obs3]; endome[obs3]; conceal &c. 528. [of aluminum] anodize. [of steel] galvanize. Adj. covering &c. v.; superimposed, overlaid, plated &c. v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... prayer-wheels from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green 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 in dusty bales, smelling atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling |
