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Porcelain   Listen
noun
Porcelain  n.  A fine translucent or semitransculent kind of earthenware, made first in China and Japan, but now also in Europe and America; called also China, or China ware. "Porcelain, by being pure, is apt to break."
Ivory porcelain, porcelain with a surface like ivory, produced by depolishing. See Depolishing.
Porcelain clay. See under Clay.
Porcelain crab (Zool.), any crab of the genus Porcellana and allied genera (family Porcellanidae). They have a smooth, polished carapace.
Porcelain jasper. (Min.) See Porcelanite.
Porcelain printing, the transferring of an impression of an engraving to porcelain.
Porcelain shell (Zool.), a cowry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Porcelain" Quotes from Famous Books



... an August, full of good-humor after all, That he and his Royalties and big Lordships having dined, he gave the still groaning table with all its dishes, to be scrambled for by "the janizaries." Janizaries, Imitation-Turk valetaille; who speedily made clearance,—many a bit of precious Meissen porcelain going far down in society ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... buildings in this country. In those of a circus at Bordeaux, considerable portions of which are standing, I measured the bricks, and found them nineteen or twenty inches long, eleven or twelve inches wide, and from one and a half to two inches thick; their texture as fine, compact, and solid as that of porcelain. The bricks now made, though of the same dimensions, are not so fine. They are burnt in a kind of furnace, and make excellent work. The elm tree shows itself at Bordeaux peculiarly proper for being spread flat for arbors. Many are done in this way on the Quay des Charterons. Strawberries, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... oolite to flake away like the leaves of a mouldering book, only warm with a glow of perpetually deepening gold the marbles of Athens and Verona; and the same laws of chemical change which reduce the granites of Dartmoor to porcelain clay, bind the sands of Coventry into stones which can be built ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... were of cashmere. A Persian carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk, hung small pictures by ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... province through which he passed. Jews attending the fair at Frankfort on the Oder were compelled to pay a head tax, and were admitted to Leipzig and Dresden on condition that they might be expelled at any time. Berlin Jews were compelled to buy annually a certain quantity of porcelain, derisively called "Jew's porcelain" from the Royal manufactory and to sell it abroad. When a Jew married he had to get permission and an annual impost was paid on each member of the family, while only one son could remain at home, and ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... next challenged their attention, being close at hand. In front of its arched entrance stood two blue and green vases which they learned were from the national porcelain factories of Sevres, both very handsome. That factory had sent about two thousand pieces of its beautiful and costly china. Most of them had been already sold, but the captain and his party ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... not only a treasure-house of spices, jewels, valuable goods, and medicaments, but a factory of marvelously delicate goods and wares which the West could not rival—glass, porcelain, silks, satins, rugs, tapestries, and metal-work. The tradition of Asiatic supremacy in these manufactures has been preserved to our own day in such familiar names as damask linen, china-ware, japanned ware, Persian rugs, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... power. Some women are already made in the image of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usually comes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure of porcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman he needs for himself; and very wonderful too is that making,—though the man will always have been the father before he ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... these vagaries, these senile ramblings of a superannuated musician. Ah, me! I too was once in Arcady, where the shepherds bravely piped original and penetrating tunes, where the little shepherdesses danced to their lords and smiled sweet porcelain smiles. It was all very real, this music of the middle century, and it was written for the time, it suited the time, and when the time passed, the music with the men grew stale, sour, and something to be avoided, like the leer of a creaking, senescent beau, like the rouge and grimace of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... diamond—the Queen's own star of the garter—a sample of otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously, or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness. Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and when he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de Florval-Delval, nee de Melval-Norval, gazing upon him with friendly and serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson's ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... porcelain, kwalis or iron pans, in sets of various sizes, tobacco shred very fine, gold thread, fans, and a number of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... 'Bodega,' he steps out again into the rain-swept street, regains his cab, and drives to the English tavern of the Rue d'Amsterdam. He has just time for dinner, and he finds a place beside the insulaires, with 'their porcelain eyes, their crimson cheeks,' and orders a heavy English dinner, which he washes down with ale and porter, seasoning his coffee, as he imagines we do in England, with gin. As time passes, and the hour of the train draws near, he begins to reflect vaguely on ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... capable of being turned out or pressed, as wood, horn, hoof, pearl, bone, ivory, jet, ivory nuts; every manufactured material of which the same may be said, as caoutchouc, leather, papier mache, glass, porcelain, etc., buttons are made in a great variety of shape; but at the present time they may be classed under four heads: buttons with shanks, buttons without shanks, buttons on rings or wire moulds, and buttons covered with cloth ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... high soft caps that our good protestant clergy now wear in common with the Russian popes were not the fashion at that time, in the country at least, and instead of wide bands, resembling the white porcelain plate on which the daughter of Herodias received the head of John the Baptist from her stepfather, he wore little narrow bands, which his dear wife Regina had sewed, starched and ironed for him in all Christian humility, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... difficulty by exposing it to the reaction of sulphate of copper, is permeable to water, but will not permit the passage of the majority of salts. Pfeffer, by producing these walls in the interstices of a porous porcelain, has succeeded in giving them sufficient rigidity to allow measurements to be made. It must be allowed that, unfortunately, no physicist or chemist has been as lucky as these two botanists; and the attempts to reproduce semi-permeable ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... people who take kindly to a wetting. It is not a ruin, Will, such as you have been permitted to visit, but a magnificent building with all of the modern improvements. The only wettings that the inmates sustain are of a daily character and due entirely to voluntary association with porcelain bath-tubs and nickle-plated showers, and they never get anything wet but their skins. As for the furnishings, I can assure you that the entire Blithers fortune could not replace them if they were to be destroyed by fire or pillage. They are priceless and they ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... of beads. The bracelets most in demand are simple rings of copper five-eighths of an inch thick, and weighing about a pound; those of smaller size not being so much valued. I gave him fifteen such rings, and about ten pounds of beads in varieties, the red coral porcelain (dimiriaf) being the most acceptable. Legge was by no means satisfied: he said "his belly was very big and it must be filled," which signified, that his desire was great and must be gratified. I accordingly gave him a few extra copper ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... in the East, met the Indians in their wigwams and studied their habits on the prairies of the far West. The designs were made in water colors, and although in nearly every instance they were bold and striking, they were difficult to reproduce perfectly upon porcelain with hard mineral colors, and to accomplish this successfully it was necessary to invent new methods and to have recourse to peculiar mechanical appliances, but the effort was successful and the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... girls, to display their graces on the counters. They were placed in chairs, or motor cars of doll land, or seated carefully in baby carriages. There were walking dolls and talking dolls and dolls who could suck real milk out of real bottles into tin-lined stomachs. Some exquisitely gowned porcelain Parisiennes, with eyelashes and long hair cut from the heads of penniless children, were almost as big and as aristocratic as their potential millionaire mistresses. Humbler sisters of middle class combined prettiness with cheapness, and had ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... out of the room."—" Memorial," Oct.10, 1816. Napoleon relates that at the last conference of Campo-Fermio, to put an end to the resistance of the Austrian plenipotentiary, he suddenly arose, seized a set of porcelain on a stand near him and dashed it to the floor, exclaiming, "Thus will I shatter your monarchy before a month is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of being rendered indestructible in marble. If ever Providence (but I know it never will) should assign me a superfluity of gold, part of it shall be expended for a service of plate, or most delicate porcelain, to be wrought into the shapes of summer-squashes gathered from vines which I will plant with my own hands. As dishes for containing vegetables, they ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Della Robbias was another Florentine family of artists equally numerous. Of the five Rossellini, Antonio is of greatest interest to us, as a sculptor who had some qualities in common with the famous porcelain workers. Like them, he had a special gift for the Madonna in Adoration. We can see this subject in his best style of treatment, in the beautiful Nativity in San Miniato, "which may be regarded as one of the most charming productions of the best period of Tuscan ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... very mysterious one, and of a nature to perplex even the philosophic observer. Certain bodies, such as the metals, convey it, and are called conductors; certain others, such as glass and porcelain, arrest it, and are called insulators. It is for this reason that the wires of the telegraph are supported by a non-conductor, for if not, the electric current would pass into the earth by the first post and never reach its final ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... I should think," said the girl, with a swift twinkle. She measured off a diminutive man on the huge blue-and-white porcelain stove and stood back to survey it. "And about as big," she ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... restaurant. Above the other sideboard hung a barometer, excessively ornate, which seems to play a great part in their existence; Rogron gazed at it as he might at his future wife. Between the two windows is a white porcelain stove in a niche overloaded with ornament. The walls glow with a magnificent paper, crimson and gold, such as you see in the same restaurants, where, no doubt, the Rogrons chose it. Dinner was served on white and gold china, with a ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... before the departure of Madeleine, distressed her deeply; but small troubles and great were incongruously mingled in her mind, for, while she was tormented by the frustration of her plans, she fretted almost as heartily over that set of Sevres porcelain which, with the addition of her grandson, would not be sufficient for the expected guests, even if Madeleine dined in her own chamber. Besides, the arrival of Maurice made that arrangement out of the question. He would certainly oppose her banishment, just ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... His luxurious, fan-shaped red beard was crumpled. The right half of the ruddy face was still crimsonly glowing from lying long on the uncomfortable oilcloth pillow. But the amazing, vividly blue eyes, cold and luminous, looked clear and hard, like blue porcelain. Having ended interrogating, recording, and cursing out with obscenities the throng of ragamuffins, taken in during the night for sobering up and now being sent out over their own districts, he threw himself against the back ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... stock that grazed in four States. At certain seasons, likewise, despite the fact that the ranch was well into the foot-hill country, there might be found a New York family playing at life primeval with the co-operation of porcelain bath-tubs, a French chef, and ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... fine qualities of head and heart, Theo Desmond was little given to cool deliberation in the critical moments of life. This chance-met girl, fragile as a flower and delicately tinted as a piece of porcelain, full of enthusiasm for her new surroundings and of a delight half shy, half spontaneous in the companionship of a man so unlike the blase, self-centred youths of her limited experience, had, for the time being, swept him off his feet. And men are apt to do unaccountable ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... the South encounter in their efforts to accept new and progressive ideas. The other sex, in a blind sort of way, hold fast to an absolute kind of chivalry akin to that of the renowned Don Quixote, by which they try to hold women in the background as a kind of porcelain liable to crack and breakage unless daintily handled. Women here see the spirit of the age and the need of change far more clearly than the men, and act up to this light, but with a flexible grace that disarms opposition. They see the necessity of work and are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... Father in their own interest, poor little fellows; they had been given temporary leave of absence so that they might not hear any unkind remarks, any cruel allusions in the parlor or the courtyard. Thereupon the Nabob flew into a terrible rage, so that he demolished a whole porcelain service, and it seems that, if it had not been for M. de Gery, he would have gone off on the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... attained high perfection. Their machinery and tools appear to have been defective, but the defect was supplied by skill of hand, traditional and acquired, as it is among the Chinese. They were cunning workmen in metals, in jewelry, in engravings, in enamel, in glass, in porcelain, and in pottery. Their fine linen and embroidery were famous. For their chariots Solomon gave 600 shekels of silver; and they fashioned into a hundred articles of luxury the ivory of Africa, the mahogany of India, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... or three generations—ill-fated ventures on the treacherous main of science. Here a fat-bellied alembic lolled lazily over in a gleamy sand-bath, like a beach-lost galleon at ebb-tide; and there a heap of broken porcelain-tubing and shreds of crucibles lay like bleaching ship-ribs on a sullen shore. Beyond, by the middle window, stood a furnace, fireless, and clogged with gray ashes. Two or three solid old-time tables, built when joiners were more lavish of oaken timber ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... colander, gravy and jelly strainers, and vegetable-sifter or puree-sieve; six tin pie-plates, and from four to six jelly-cake tins with straight edges; and at least one porcelain-lined kettle, holding not less than four quarts, while a three-gallon one for preserving and canning is ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... was so useful? We were not competent to buy a picture, choose a dress, or furnish a house without a knowledge of color harmony, to say nothing of the facility such knowledge gave in all kinds of painting on porcelain, art ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that makes the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... made so poetic?) detach themselves and live with a personal life. Two of the sisters stand hand in hand at the back, in the delightful, the almost equal, company of a pair of immensely tall emblazoned jars, which overtop them and seem also to partake of the life of the picture; the splendid porcelain and the aprons of the children shine together, while a mirror in the brown depth behind them catches the light. Another little girl presents herself, with abundant tresses and slim legs, her hands behind her, quite to the left; and the youngest, nearest to the spectator, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... if you ever did, the mere mention of the name Bridgley will be full and ample description. Still, if you must have some sort of a lay figure to hang your imaginings on, think of a man who always reminds you of a slender, delicate porcelain vase of great antiquity that you know a strong wind would smash to fragments,—yet when you accidentally swat it off the mantelpiece to the floor it bobs up without a crack. Then you grow bolder and more curious and jump on it with both feet in your hob-nailed ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... red, the carpet, eiderdown, rep cover of the armchair, plush on the photograph frames, embroidered mats upon the washstand, tiles upon the stove, everything a deep, dark red. Four mugs stood upon the mantelpiece, and ... she rubbed her eyes ... was it possible that one had an iron cross upon its porcelain, one the legend "Got mit uns," the third the head of the Kaiser, the fourth the head of the Kaiserin? "That is too much! The people I shall write to won't ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... at me, turned and glanced up at her smoke-blackened house, where a dozen Prussian soldiers leaned from the lower windows smoking their long porcelain pipes and the provost marshal stood in the doorway, helmeted, spurred, immaculate from golden cheek-guard to the glittering tip of his silver scabbard. An Uhlan, dismounted, stood on guard below the steps, his lance ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... nearly full moon. The light flooded the wide lawn path, and made shadows of elves and gnomes on the porch, as the wind wandered in and out the great honeysuckle, whose ripe, rich perfume was shaken about with every waft. Within, an Argand lamp, and porcelain shade with a minute painting of Puck and his fairy host, sent a softened radiance on the old, rich-hued carpet, and antique furniture. It was but little changed, yet wore an ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... match-safe Cat," was the answer, and then, his eyes having become used to the dark, the Candy Rabbit saw that he was sitting near a hollow porcelain Cat, ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope

... said: "What is the colour of the stove in this room?" at the same time looking out of the window to make sure that she knew what a "stove" was. "Green," was her answer—and quite right too, for the stove is built of green porcelain tiles. I asked her a few more questions relating to flowers and to articles in daily use until I had no further doubt as to her being competent to tell one colour from the other. Coming generations may, perhaps, laugh at these numerous tests, instead ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... to us children was the choice yet large collection she possessed! Most of the members of the royal house had often been her guests, and had increased it to a little museum which contained countless milk and cream jugs of every sort and metal, even the most precious, and of porcelain and glass of every age. Many would have been rare and welcome ornaments to any trades-museum. Our mother had contributed a remarkably handsome Japanese jug which her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... what kind of dolls they were, but they had to have hollow porcelain heads, and they were to be bought from one man only, an indispensable fellow-conspirator in one of the principal ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... trees, about twenty feet above the ground, and ran in a zig-zag direction through the woods. It had evidently been put up by men not familiar with the telephone business, for no attempt had been made to go in a straight line, and, in some places the porcelain insulators were carelessly fastened to the trees. The wire was run through the branches with little regard for the safety of the conductor, and the boys noticed several places where better support might have been ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... a Garden, not for show Planted, but use; where wholesome herbs should grow. A Cabinet of curious porcelain, where No fancy enters, but what's rich or rare. A Chapel, where mere ornamental things Are pure as crowns of saints, or angels' wings. A List of living friends; a holier Room For names of some since mouldering in the tomb, Whose blooming ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... chalets, cloisters, bastions, exhibition pavilions, pot-bellied houses, fakirs, buried in the ground, with expressionless faces, with only one enormous eye; dungeon gates, ponderous gates, iron hoops, golden cryptograms on the panes of grated windows, belching monsters over the front door, blue porcelain tiles plastered on in most unexpected places; variegated mosaics representing Adam and Eve; roofs covered with tiles of jarring colors; houses like citadels with castellated walls, deformed animals on the roofs, no windows ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... room; suddenly, however, he stood still in front of the queen, who had softly withdrawn into a window-niche, where she had watched every movement of the king. "Louisa, will your repasts be as agreeable to you on porcelain plates ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly placid and unseeing and unhearing, yet venomously watching to be placated with food. Opposite the stove, on the white wall, hung a row of brass hooks, from which dangled porcelain spoons with pierced handles. On a serving-table stood the piled bowls for the day, blue-and-white rice patterns, of a thin, translucent ware, showing the delicate light through the rice seeds; red-and-green dragoned bowls for the puddings; and tiny saucer-like ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... He promised that he would show us a piece of the old Roman wall, but he showed us ever so much more, beginning with the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found the afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville. Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... out in one corner of the yard, and under this were set the tables. And pretty, indeed, did they look under the soft lights of the numerous candles in their shiny whiteness of heavy napery, polished silver, dainty porcelain, and ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... The original possessor sought restitution from the person who took the sovereign from his hand, but was referred to the actual possessor, but refused to make the application. The return of the money was formally demanded of the man of porcelain, pitchers, and pipkins, without avail. In this state of things the loser obtained a summons against the taker, and the result, as might be expected, was compulsion to restore the lost sovereign to the loving subject, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... aspect of dwellings in other countries, they have the effect of temporary decorations. But when one has entered within these walls of green and blue and red arabesques, inspected their thickness, viewed the ponderous porcelain stores, tasted, perhaps, the bountiful cheer of the owner, he realizes their palpable comforts, and begins to suspect that all the external adornment is merely an attempt to restore to Nature that coloring of which she is stripped by the cold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... fastened upon his mind; he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark that what cannot be repaired is not ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... to the floor. There was an immediate shindy. A coffee-cup was hurled by some indignant compatriot of the man assaulted and sent a splendid looking-glass, seven or eight feet high, to irremediable ruin< A coffee-cup in a Constantinople cafe is made of porcelain as thick as a lady's little finger, and weighs something like a quarter of a pound. In less time than it takes to tell it the nationalities were mixed and sorted again. Gaul, Briton, and Teuton—there were seven of ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... they came back again to Idepski's face. The agent nodded, flinging his cigarette end into the porcelain cuspidore ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... make a long story short, on October 17, 1829, Kaspar did not come to midday eating, but was found weltering in his gore, in the cellar of Daumer's house. Being offered refreshment in a cup, he bit out a piece of the porcelain and swallowed it. He had 'an inconsiderable wound' on the forehead; to that extent the assassin had effected his purpose. Feuerbach thinks that the murderer had made a shot at Kaspar's throat with a razor, that ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... the northern part of China by Genghis Khan, the city of Campion in Tangut seems to have been fixed upon by him as the seat of a great inland trade. Linens, stuffs made of cotton, gold, silver, silks, and porcelain, were brought hither by the Chinese merchants, and bought by merchants from ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... the same phenomenon with Doebereiner's spongy platina. They show that all metals have this power in a greater or smaller degree, and that it is even possessed by such bodies as charcoal, pumice, porcelain, glass, rock crystal, &c., when their temperatures are raised; and that another of Davy's effects, in which oxygen and hydrogen had combined slowly together at a heat below ignition, was really dependent upon the property of the heated glass, which ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... the barkeeper knew his peculiarities, for a tall, black bottle with a wabbly cork—consisting of a porcelain marble confined in a miniature bird-cage—was passed to the major before he had opened his mouth. When he did open it—the mouth—there was no audible protest as regards the selection. When he closed it again the flow line had fallen some three fingers. It is, however, fair to the major to say ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... government have determined upon building the ramparts of japanned canvas and bamboo rods, instead of pounded rice, which was thought almost too fragile to resist the attacks of the English barbarians. Some handsome guns, of blue and white porcelain, have been placed on the walls, with a proportionate number of carved ivory balls, elaborately cut one inside the other. These, it is presumed, will split upon firing, and produce incalculable mischief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... some few moments, during which his eyes wandered about the apartment in that professional survey which took in every detail, from the colour of the curtains and the pattern of the carpets, to the tiniest porcelain toy in an antique cabinet on one side of the fireplace. The only thing upon which the detective's glance lingered was the lamp, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... hawk on stretched wings over the prey he spies, for an idea of this change in the look of a young lady whom Vernon Whitford could liken to the Mountain Echo, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson pronounced to be "a dainty rogue in porcelain". ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of furniture falling, porcelain breaking, steps running about the room, and the barking of dogs-mingled with new cries. Almost instantly lights burned, swords shone in the galleries, and the heavy steps of the ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... public were so anxious to consider the comfort of the illustrious prisoner, that they even subscribed to purchase a breakfast service of Sevres, so that the heir to the throne might drink his chocolate out of a porcelain cup. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... in mist, that we could not, without difficulty, find our way. At this height there is no path, and we were obliged to climb with our hands, when our feet failed us, on the steep and slippery acclivity. A vein filled with porcelain-clay attracted our attention.* (* The breadth of the vein is three feet. This porcelain-clay, when moistened, readily absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere. I found, at Caracas, the residual nitrogen very slightly ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... to say that this was why I thought him a finer writer than Dickens, but I will own that it was probably one of the reasons why I liked him better; if I appreciated him so fully as I felt, I must be of a finer porcelain than the earthen pots which were not aware of any particular difference in the various liquors poured into them. In Dickens the virtue of his social defect is that he never appeals to the principle which sniffs, in his reader. The base of his work is the whole ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... celebrated for its exquisite decorative design. Upon superb works of porcelain we have skillful representations of subjects taken from nature and from mythology, which are set with perfect taste upon fields or within borders of elaborate geometric design. If we should ask how such motives came to be employed in ceramic decoration, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes

... our diplomatic corps from the younger branches of the aristocracy, or from the sons of men of wealth apeing the manners and travestying the mode of life of the grand seigneurs, who conceive themselves made of "the porcelain of earth's clay." The Schimmelpennicks, the De Serres, the Rushes, the Wheatons, the Clays, the Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Rufus Kings, the Daniel Websters, the Dr. Bankses, have all been lawyers; the Washington Irvings, the Bancrofts, the Guizots, the Bunsens, the Niebuhrs, the Humboldts, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... and right just where she was, in that big hospitable room, cultured but Anglican, without pretensions or novelties, with a glow of bound books, with the grand piano that Miriam, his third daughter, was beginning to play so well, with the tea equipage of shining silver and fine porcelain. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... easily refuted it by the chastity of his life, at the very time when it was made, as well as ever afterwards. His conduct likewise gave the lie to that of luxurious extravagance in his furniture, when, upon the taking of Alexandria, he reserved for himself nothing of the royal treasures but a porcelain cup, and soon afterwards melted down all the vessels of gold, even such as were intended for common use. But his amorous propensities never left him, and, as he grew older, as is reported, he was in ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... of attributing to himself speeches uttered and deeds done by other people;' Letourneur, a corpulent rustic, whose excellent wife loudly exulted over her joy in finding herself 'eating stewed beef out of Sevres porcelain,' and who, being asked when he came back from the Jardin des Plantes whether he had seen Lacepede, innocently replied: 'No; but I saw La giraffe!'—Carnot, 'Papa Victory,' of whom Lareveillere says that 'nobody could endure his vanity and self-conceit;' and, lastly, Lareveillere ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... were the faint traces of a proud, though almost extinguished, beauty—traces which were visible in the impetuous flash of her sightless eyes, in the noble arch of her brows, and in the transparent quality of her now yellowed skin, which still kept the look of rare porcelain held against the sunlight. On a dainty, rose-decked tray beside her chair there were the half of a broiled chicken, a thin glass of port, and a plate of buttered waffles; and near her high footstool a big yellow cat was busily lapping ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... retorts, crucibles and jars, porcelain and glass vessels, of all odd sorts and shapes, confronted them on tables and shelves, and seated before small furnaces, with gauze protectors for their faces and metal ones for their knees, and queer little rubber gloves for their hands, ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... done by giving them rest rooms with Turkish rugs nor porcelain bathtubs, nor by installing a moving-picture show for them to watch while they eat lunch," said the professor. "It can't be done with money alone. It would work in isolated cases. Give some men a sufficient wage and ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... phosphorescence, and communicated to the water an already sensible yellow tint; alcohol put upon the phosphorescent gills did not at once completely obliterate the light, but visibly enfeebled it. As to the spores, which are white, I have found many times very dense coats of them thrown down on porcelain plates, but I have ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... sixteen, had the exquisite face which Raphael drew for his Virgins; eyes of pathetic innocence, weary with overwork—black eyes, with long lashes, their moisture parched with the heat of laborious nights, and darkened with fatigue; a complexion like porcelain, almost too delicate; a mouth like a partly opened pomegranate; a heaving bosom, a full figure, pretty hands, the whitest teeth, and a mass of black hair; and the whole meagrely set off by a cotton frock at seventy-five centimes ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... a native village of Japan, is forty stores and there you see the most beautiful display of rugs, carved ivory and wood, porcelain, jewels, fans, paintings, etc., and the workmen busy making 'em right before your eyes. And in the narrer streets jugglers, acrobats, fortune tellers are giving their mysterious performances. There are bands of music, jinrikishaws with ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... the wreck, Mazarine saw his treasured porcelain shattered. With a growl of rage he stooped and seized Li Choo by the collar, flung him out of the door, and then with his heavy boot kicked him once, twice, thrice, a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... big dressing chair, with a tempting breakfast tray drawn close beside her, looked up serene and comfortable, and said, after setting down her porcelain chocolate cup with ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... rural life, that must have proved to be a prodigious caricature. The King (at least, so the guide affirmed), performed the part of the Seigneur, and occupied the proper abode; the Queen was the Dairy woman, and we were shown the marble tables that held her porcelain milk-pans; the present King, as became his notorious propensity to field-sports, was the Garde-de-Chasse, the late King was the Miller, and, mirabile dictu, the Archbishop of Paris did not disdain to ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... off the tomatoes and cut in rather large pieces; shred cabbage; peel and slice carrots; peel and chop onions; cut corn from cob; cut celery as for salad; remove the seeds from peppers, chop them and the parsley quite fine. Mix all together and boil for one hour in a porcelain or agate kettle, stirring often to prevent scorching; about ten minutes before it is done, add salt to taste. Seal hot in glass jars. Potatoes may be added to the soup ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... after this evening, let us return from theory and general principles, to practice and details, and see whether we can find out how it is that Indians combine color, how Japanese use natural form decoratively, how Chinamen make porcelain lovely and noble; how Greeks of old time have sculptured and Frenchmen have created Gothic architecture, and Italians have raised painting to the highest heaven of achievement. There is happiness, if study can ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... entered the door, I following after her until we came to the great hall. There I found, O Prince of True Believers, carpets of fine silk and embroidered hangings and mattresses of gold-cloth and vases of the same kind all golden and fine brocades and jars of porcelain and shelves of crystal; in fine I saw things which I may not describe to thee, O Commander of the Faithful. And at the side of the mansion within were four bench-seats of yellow brass, plain and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... too,—an imp whose moral nature had never been awakened,—an imp up for a holiday, and willing to try virtue as a diversion. I don't know that he had any spiritual nature. He was very superstitious. He carried about with him a hideous little porcelain god, which he was in the habit of alternately reviling and propitiating. He was too intelligent for the commoner Chinese vices of stealing or gratuitous lying. Whatever discipline he practised was taught ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... existence. He took the colonel's passport and summoned a waiter, who went bowing before them up a staircase more or less grandiose, and led them to a pleasant chamber, whither he sent directly a woman servant. She bade them a hearty good morning in her tongue, and, kneeling down before the tall porcelain stove, kindled from her apronful of blocks and sticks a fire that soon penetrated the travellers with a rich comfort. It was of course too early yet to think of breakfast, but it was fortunately not ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... out of the question, as they had reached the foot of the stairway. In another moment Edward Macleod was bending profoundly over the hand of his hostess. The aristocratic, little old lady, with her delicate faded face, always seemed to him like some rare piece of porcelain or other fragile, highly-finished object. He led her to the easiest chair, and drew his own close beside her, only interrupting the absorbed attention which he gave to her remarks by soft inquiries regarding her health, or compliments upon the way in which her not very vigorous constitution had ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... traversed in former days, on grand court occasions in the time of Ferdinand VII, when they were glittering with all the splendor of a court, we paused in a great saloon, with high-vaulted ceiling incrusted with florid devices in porcelain, and hung with silken tapestry, but all in dim twilight, like the rest of the palace. At one end of the saloon the door opened to an almost interminable range of other chambers, through which, at a distance, we had a glimpse ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Kyoto—in spite of its huge factory chimneys. In Tokio, complete European dress is common in the streets, but in Kyoto it is the exception. Tokio also wears boots, but Kyoto is noisy with pattens night and day. Not only are there countless shops in Kyoto given up to porcelain, carvings, screens, bronzes, old armour, and so forth, but no matter how trumpery the normal stock in trade of the other shops, a number of them have a little glass case—a shop within a shop, as it were—in which a few rare and ancient articles of beauty are kept. A great deal of Japan ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... Another Effective Herb Remedy.—"Pour boiling hot water on four ounces of gentian root with two ounces of dried orange peel, a sufficient amount of water should be used to exhaust the strength in the root and orange peel; then boil in a porcelain pot until there is left one-half pint of the concentrated infusion to every ounce of gentian root used. Then to every one-half pint add one half ounce alcohol. The effect of the alcohol is to coagulate it from a quantity of jelly looking substance ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... man; she fancied he was not very good, and then she grew angry with herself for suspecting him. But honest or dishonest, she was sure he could love no one; and she strove to recall his face. She could remember nothing but the cold merciless eyes—eyes that were like the palest blue porcelain: 'But how ungrateful I am,' thought the girl, and she checked the bitter flow of reproaches that ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... the twenty-five-cent valentines. They presented a dazzling sight of cherubs' heads and wings and flowery garlands. She lifted her chin a little higher, and there, staring her in the face, was the very little paint-box, with its two brushes and porcelain color plate, and it seemed to say to her: "Come, buy me now; come, buy me now. If you don't, somebody else will get me." And she could buy it now, if only—she gave up the valentine—Jane's valentine; and—why shouldn't she? She hadn't ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... surprise that such a woman should truly act Juliet. Much though there be in a personality that is assumed, there is much more in the personality that assumes it. Golden fire in a porcelain vase would not be more luminous than was the soul of that actress as it shone through her ideal of Juliet. The performance did not stop short at the interpretation of a poetic fancy. It was amply and completely that—but it was more than that, being also a living experience. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... been in the habit of taking care of young girls, as if they were the precious porcelain of human clay. The American mamma treats her beautiful daughter as if she were a very common piece of delft indeed, and as if she could drift down the stream of life, knocking all other vessels to pieces, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... asked Nan Bruce, and she told him all she knew. He then made arrangements to take Patty home with him, for he knew now she was his own little girl. So Patty went to live with the doctor, and she had lovely dresses of porcelain to wear, and a servant to stand in statu quo behind ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... stands an elegant column of carved oak, its panels showing scenes from "The Hunchback." In the dining-room there is fantastic wainscoting with plaques and porcelain tiles inlaid here and there. Many of these ornaments were presents, sent by unknown admirers in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or somebody, but none of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... flesh than sandal-wood, Where the full soul in pleasure basks And dreams of love, the only good. The walls were all with pictures hung: Gay villas bright in rain-washed air, Trees to whose boughs brown monkeys clung, Outlineless dabs of fuzzy hair. And all about the opulent shelves Littered with porcelain beyond price: Imari pots arrayed themselves Beside Ming dishes; grain-of-rice Vied with the Royal Satsuma, Proud of its sallow ivory beam; And Kaga's Thousand Hermits lay Tranced in some punch-bowl's golden gleam. Over bronze censers, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... above them were columns of Voltaic cells. Robert's eyes, as he glanced around, lit on vast wheels, complicated networks of wire, stands, test-tubes, coloured bottles, graduated glasses, Bunsen burners, porcelain insulators, and all the varied debris of a ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... screw driver in one claw and flew up to the top of the pole. David could hear the creak of the lines under the Phoenix's weight and the rattling of the screw driver against the porcelain insulators. For some minutes the Phoenix investigated, clicking and scraping about, and muttering "Quite so" and "There we are." Then it fluttered down again and ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... reception-room was crowded with the presents. The objects were of Japanese manufacture, and consisted of specimens of rich brocades and silks; of their famous lacquered ware, such as chow-chow boxes, tables, trays, and goblets, all skilfully wrought and finished with an exquisite polish; of porcelain cups of wonderful lightness and transparency, adorned with figures and flowers in gold and variegated colors, and exhibiting a workmanship that surpassed even that of the ware for which the Chinese are ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... principal (gres des Vosges, properly so-called). (3) Lower Buntsandstein, fine-grained clayey and micaceous sandstones, red-grey, yellow, white and mottled. The cement of the sandstones is often felspathic; for this reason they yield useful porcelain clays in the Thuringerwald. Clay galls are common in the sandstones of some districts, and in the neighbourhood of the Harz an oolitic calcareous sandstone, Rogenstein, occurs. In eastern Hesse, the lowest beds ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... generally so sparing, was lavishly spent in ploughing bogs, in planting mulberry trees amidst the sand, in bringing sheep from Spain to improve the Saxon wool, in bestowing prizes for fine yarn, in building manufactories of porcelain, manufactories of carpets, manufactories of hardware, manufactories of lace. Neither the experience of other rulers, nor his own, could ever teach him that something more than an edict and a grant of public money ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... playing golf. She entered the library, lustrous with its rows of books and its deep-toned paintings hung against wooden panels. Between half-drawn window curtains passed rays of sunshine that came to rest upon vases of flowers arranged in porcelain bowls; but the corners of the room were steeped in shadows. A man who had been sitting on a couch amid these ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... Congo. Even the well-inhabited quarter of Kings Port (and I had now come within this limited domain) holds narrow lanes and recesses which teem and swarm with negroes. As cracks will run through fine porcelain, so do these black rifts of Africa lurk almost invisible among the gardens and the houses. The picture that these places offered, tropic, squalid, and fecund, often caused me to walk through them and watch the basking ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... mankind strove in one titanic fight for supremacy. Conventions held him fast. He must go somewhere, however. Where? Was there in Old or New World an unbeaten track his feet had not trodden, a chance for adventure—man-strife? Manchuria! It would not do. His was not the mood for the porcelain, perfect politeness of Nippon. He was no beast to revel in the stupid orgies ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... Francois was apprenticed to a porcelain painter of Paris, but, yielding to a taste and aptitude for music, in the year 1825, he sought and obtained admission to the Conservatory as a pensioner. Here a great trial awaited him—a trial which wrecked his musical career, but was a decided ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... extremity of the Canal of Briare, which unites the Loire and its lateral canal with the Loing and so with the Seine. The canal of Briare was constructed from 1605 to 1642 and is about 36 m. long. The industries include the manufacture of fine pottery, and of so-called porcelain buttons made of felspar and milk by a special process; its inventor, Bapterosses, has a bust in the town. The canal traffic is in wood, iron, coal, building materials, &c. A modern hospital and church, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... before the fire. The decoration of the room consisted mainly in French engravings from Watteau and Chardin, in one or two fine black lacquer cabinets and in a number of jars and vases of Chinese porcelain, some standing on the floor and some on shelves, the neutral-tinted walls a background to their bright, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... read himself into a light slumber. This was the time for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a tray of glasses, and a black bottle with a porcelain-topped cork, representing some clerical dignitary of a rubicund and social aspect. With the aid of these appliances we all had something warm to drink, including the Aged, who was soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, and I observed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... their bodies, fashioned them into ludicrous, grotesque, or hideous monstrosities for king and populace to laugh at, and then resold them. Soft, immature faces were made into animal likenesses; tender, unformed bodies were put into wicker forms or porcelain vases and allowed to grow; then when they had become things of compressed flesh and twisted bone, the wicker was cut, the vase was broken, leaving a man in the shape of a bottle or ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... meals and warmed themselves over the dull glow of the brazier, smoking cigars and discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with hatred against the French. Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate and porcelain adorned a buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light, sparsely admitted, allowed these dazzling objects to show but slightly; all things, as in pictures of the Dutch school, looked brown, even the faces. Between the ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... had no great faith in our bee investigations, or she may have been inclined to discount Lazarus. She sent a porcelain dish, which I filled ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... concluded that Matt had made the name to suit the initials. Mr. Jackson opened the locket, and found it contained a miniature of a lady. He passed it to me, and I gazed at it with a thrill of emotion? Was it my mother who looked out upon me from the porcelain? Did she perish in the terrible steamboat calamity from which I had been so providentially saved? I carried the locket to the fire, where I could examine more minutely the features of the person. It was the portrait of a lady not more than twenty-five years of age. ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic

... these good people, save for the cherished consciousness that it was not by necessity but choice. Though we saw fit to drink our tea out of earthen cups to-night, and in earthen company, it was at our own option to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again to-morrow. This same salvo, as to the power of regaining our former position, contributed much, I fear, to the equanimity with which we subsequently bore many of the hardships and humiliations of a life of toil. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Renaissance period, a table and chairs which dated from the reign of Louis XIII, an enormous bedstead, style Louis XIV, and a very handsome wardrobe, Louis XV. In the middle of these venerable old things a white porcelain stove, and the little toilet-table, covered with a pretty oilcloth, seemed out of place and to mar the dull harmony. Curtained with an old-fashioned rose-coloured chintz, on which were bouquets of heather, so faded that the colour had become a ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... things. There were even pictures on the wall, evolved out of the depths of that great coffer, which, more dear to the Contessa even than her wardrobe, went about with her everywhere—and precious pieces of porcelain: Madame di Forno-Populo, it need not be said, being quite above the mean and cheap decoration made with fans or unmeaning scraps of colour. The maids aforesaid, who obtained perilous and breathless ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... deals. Oversight of legally important matters is, therefore, almost inevitable. I remember how an eager young doctor was once witness of an assault with intent to kill. He had seen how in an inn the criminal had for some time threatened his victim with a heavy porcelain match-tray. "The os parietale may here be broken,'' the doctor thought, and while he was thinking of the surgical consequences of such a blow, the thing was done and the doctor had not seen how the blow was delivered, whether a knife had been drawn by the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... several lamps of Pompeiian model. A wide window in the east end, filled with plants in bloom, admitted ample light, which, glancing through the flowers, fell on a table dressed in elegant cloth, and bearing a lacquered waiter garnished with cups of metal and glass, and one hand-painted porcelain decanter for drinking water. An enormous tiger-skin, the head intact and finished with extraordinary realism, was spread on the floor in front of the table. The walls were brilliant with fresh Byzantine frescoing. The air of the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... merchants, a military corps, a college-class, a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a religious convention;—the persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet that assembly once dispersed, its members will not in the year meet again. Each returns to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of this union and selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... which I had before me to spend in Paris. Madame H—— was not only a beauty, but a woman of wit and learning, and had accordingly admitted Voltaire amongst the number of her household gods; the arch old cynic, with his deathlike sarcastic face, admirably represented, by a small whole length porcelain statue, occupied the centre of her chimney piece. Upon finding that I was disposed to remain in town, she recommended me to a restaurateur, in the gardens of the Thuilleries, one of the first eating houses in Paris, for society, and entertainment, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... purity of the profile and the delicacy of the lines of the face, especially that of the nose, the Grecian form of which was lost, and that of the chin, once as exquisitely rounded as a piece of white porcelain. The disease left nothing unharmed except the parts it was unable to reach,—the eyes and the teeth. She did not, however, lose the elegance and beauty of her shape,—neither the fulness of its lines nor the grace and suppleness of her waist. At fifteen Veronique was still ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... his eyes were rolled up so far that the whites showed, and he seemed to be looking fixedly at some special point in the ceiling. His face was of a somewhat yellowish tone and gave the impression of being made of porcelain, the skin was so smooth and the bones were so prominent. His forehead was uncommonly large in proportion to his small face and mouth, which was drawn together as if ready to whistle and was surrounded by many little lines centering at the lips. The shoemaker had wasted ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... Their baggage mules transported not only the precious vases, but even the fragile vessels of crystal and murra, which last is almost proved, by the learned French translator of Seneca, (tom. iii. p. 402-422,) to mean the porcelain of China and Japan. 3. The beautiful faces of the young slaves were covered with a medicated crust, or ointment, which secured them against the effects ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... instructions Jerry himself was piling up on his lank arm a pyramid of wood, and together the two ascended the stairway and tiptoed through the kitchen. As they went the boy caught a glimpse of gleaming porcelain walls; ebon-hued stoves resplendent with nickel trimmings; a blue and white tiled floor; and smart little ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... fingers, Sohrab loos'd His belt, and near the shoulder bar'd his arm, And shew'd a sign in faint vermilion points Prick'd: as a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, 670 An emperor's gift—at early morn he paints, And all day long, and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands:— So delicately prick'd the sign appear'd[42] On Sohrab's arm, the sign of Rustum's seal. 675 It was that griffin, which of old ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... Charles-Norton Sims, dropped his arms hastily down his sides and stood very still, caged in the narrow space between porcelain tub and gleaming towel-rack. The mirror before which he had been performing his morning calisthenics faced him uncompromisingly; it showed him that he was blushing. The sight increased his embarrassment. For a moment panic went bounding and rebounding swiftly in painted ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... root out, root up; averuncate|; weed out, get out; eliminate, get rid of, do away with, shake off; exenterate[obs3]. vomit, throw up, regurgitate, spew, puke, keck[obs3], retch, heave, upchuck, chuck up, barf; belch out; cast up, bring up, be sick, get sick, worship the porcelain god. disgorge; expectorate, clear the throat, hawk, spit, sputter, splutter, slobber, drivel, slaver, slabber[obs3]; eructate; drool. unpack, unlade, unload, unship, offload; break bulk; dump. be let out. spew forth, erupt, ooze &c. (emerge) 295. Adj. emitting, emitted, &c. v. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... were! They did not grow horizontally, as she had imagined they must, but upright and candle-like. Above their sticks, which were of brass, silver and decorated porcelain, was a flame, ruddy of tip, sharply pointed, but fat and yellow at the base, where the soft white wax fed the fire; at the other end of the sticks, as like the top light as if it were a perfect reflection, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... herself to the music of water roaring under high pressure into a deep porcelain tub. She was no longer hungry, for she had had a glass of milk on arriving at the hotel, but she was very tired and a little ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris

... ambitious ones for the most part perished, even before they could be shown. I will break through my law of reticence, however, so far as to tell you that I have hope of one day interesting you greatly (with the help of the Florentine masters), in the study of the arts of moulding and painting porcelain; and to induce some of you to use your future power of patronage in encouraging the various branches of this art, and turning the attention of the workmen of Italy from the vulgar tricks of minute and perishable mosaic to the exquisite subtilties of form and colour ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... kept in a damp atmosphere, and after 23 hrs. closely embraced the meat both with their tentacles and blades; and the protoplasm within their cells was well aggregated. Three ounces of doubly distilled water was heated in a porcelain vessel, with a delicate thermometer having a long bulb obliquely suspended in it. The water was gradually raised to the required temperature by a spirit-lamp moved about under the vessel; and in all cases the leaves were ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... is perfectly safe to-use. It will not become discolored by any kind of cooking, and is so perfectly smooth that articles of food will not stick and bum in it as quickly as in the porcelain-lined pans. Nearly every utensil used in the kitchen is now made in granite ware. The mixing spoons are, however, not desirable, as the coating of granite peels off when the spoon is bent. Have no more heavy cast-iron articles than are really needed, for they ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... and coldly analytical. And what had he come up here for except to ask her to marry him—to share his power? She dismissed the Washington inference with the contempt it deserved. Mr. Dinwiddie was a very experienced and astute old gentleman, but he always settled on the obvious like a hen on a porcelain egg. . . . What a manifest destiny! What an ideal match. . . . She sighed, almost envying her. But it would be almost as interesting to write about as to experience. After all, a novelist had things all her own way, and that was more than even the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... because of that defective spark-plug in the engine of the roadster. Strange what a tiny thing such as a crack in a porcelain jacket around an old spark-plug can do in the way of changing the course of ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... he saw the entire company listening in rapt attention. He at once got up from the instrument and hastily left the room, either through anger or embarrassment. Such was his haste that he ran against a table containing fine porcelain bric-a-brac, which, of course, was shattered. The Count, with easy good nature, made some reassuring remark, upon which they all made ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... notwithstanding observable enough (or I fancied so) that he did never like, though he always thought fit to praise it; and his praises resembled those of a man who extols the superior elegance of high painted porcelain, while he himself always chooses to eat off plate. I told him so one day, and he neither denied it ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... formerly in use here, have entirely disappeared even from the poorest huts; and Chinese porcelain has superseded the manufactures from the gourd ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... the impression which it made on her when she came in out of the bloomy twilight; warm and dim and smelling of violets that were set about in bowls on bookcase and cabinet, while the flames of an immense wood fire on an open hearth flickered over the blue and rose of porcelain or the oakleaf and gold of morocco. She stood in the middle of an ocean of polished floor and looked round her as if she had lost her way in it, till Lawrence came to her and kissed her hands. "Isabel, do you like the look of your ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... have admired it more if it had been a jar of richest porcelain or a rare Etruscan vase, and when I gently suggested that it was a pity to rob the barroom of so elegant an ornament, he answered, "Miners can't appreciate a handsome pitcher, any more than they can good cooking, and Mrs. —— will please to ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... keener, her speech more distinct, the lines of her thoughts more clearly defined, her verse more strongly marked in its form, and the accuracy of her memory more to be relied upon than was the case with almost any one of her contemporaries. Her painting, too, upon porcelain possessed the same character. ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... and ornamented with a bouquet of flowers. A soft bed, with fine linen and warm coverlids, stood in one corner; a toilet table and mirror draped with lace, in another; a small marble washstand, with its china service, in a third; and a French porcelain stove in the fourth. A crimson-covered easy-chair and tiny stand filled up the middle of the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... of my first visit there, I was, from the beginning, much mystified. The dining-room was quite a luxurious apartment, so was the "saint's" study—a den with a soft Eastern carpet, a big writing-table, a high porcelain stove of chocolate and white, and silk-upholstered settees. From this den a door opened into the "holy" man's sleeping-room, an apartment of spartan plainness save for its big stove, a replica of ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... river, and it was set in a great room with squares of black-and-white marble for a floor, and with a fountain with goldfish swimming in its basin, and there were red-and-blue parrots on perches, and orange-trees in porcelain pots, and the tree itself wasn't a pine-tree or a fir or a cedar; it was a queer round, clipped thing of yew, and it had red and blue and orange balls on it, and in the place of a wax angel on top there was a golden Buddha, and there were no candles—but the light shone out and out ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... core twelve good sized tart apples, place in a porcelain kettle with two quarts of cranberries, cover well with cold water and stew until soft, then strain through a jelly bag, add to this juice two pounds of confectioner's sugar, and boil as you would any other jelly, until it falls ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various

... works, again, which, without professing to entertain for the authors any strong personal regard, we read and re-peruse, as we admire a fine piece of sculpture or porcelain, an antique bronze or cameo, as masterpieces of art or models of style. We are perfectly conscious, as we proceed, that they are not to be trusted as authorities, and perhaps it is so on the very account which renders them irresistibly attractive. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... the Porcelain in a chastened mood that Sabbath morning. She was thinking of the Night Before and of playing ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... desolation. The rosewood and mahogany furniture, pictures, rugs, brass beds, all alike lay reduced to dust and ashes. A gold clock, the porcelain fittings of the bath-room, and some fine clay and meerschaum pipes in what had evidently been Van Amburg's den—these constituted all that had escaped ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England



Words linked to "Porcelain" :   ceramic ware, Spode



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