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Upholstery   /əpˈoʊlstəri/   Listen
Upholstery

noun
1.
Covering (padding and springs and webbing and fabric) on a piece of furniture.
2.
The craft of upholstering.



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"Upholstery" Quotes from Famous Books



... alluring as the luxuriance of old Rome at the height of her triumphs before her decadence set in—the last fair breath of her ancient glory—the best and fairest that modern civilization had produced. She had no need of the artificial head-gear and upholstery with which the modern society belle is wont to bolster up herself. There was not the slightest trace of rouge on her lips or cheeks. She had learned that simple food, fresh air and sleep and exercise were the only preservatives for the form and complexion. Spoiled though ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... out from a hole in the upholstery of the couch a bag of stenciled canvas, which chinked. It was full of money, in gold and silver pieces. He counted it, and sat thoughtful. Later he went out of the house and stood looking at the sea as if for a sign. But the sea gave him no sign; and on that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... usual noises inside the jeep. The air had a metallic smell. One could detect the odors of oil, and ozone, and varnish, and plastic upholstery. There were the crunching sounds of the wheels, traveling over stone. There was the paradoxic gentleness of all the jeep's motions because of the low gravity. Cochrane even noted the extraordinary feel of an upholstered seat when one weighs ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... fellows!" to confiscate his flapping, red tie and bind it across his nose; which transformed Jack Corey into a speeding fiend, if looks meant anything. Thereafter they threw themselves back upon the suffering upholstery and commented ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... disdained human sympathy. He was ambitious, and his ambition was allied with selfishness. He permitted the slaughter of the De Witts, and never gave Marlborough a command worthy of his talents. He had no taste for literature, wit, or the fine arts. His favorite tastes were hunting, gardening and upholstery. That he was, however, capable of friendship, is attested by his long and devoted attachment to Bentinck, whom he created Earl of Portland, and splendidly rewarded with rich and extensive manors in every part of the land. His reserve and coldness may in part be traced to his ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... cycloid figures, of no meaning, are here Median laws. The abomination of flowers, or representations of well-known objects of any kind, should not be endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque. As for those antique floor-cloth & still occasionally seen in the dwellings of the rabble—cloths of huge, sprawling, and radiating devises, stripe-interspersed, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... adjoining the church, close beside the altar, is shown to the visitor, where that prince of bigots, Philip II., passed the last days and hours of his life. It is a scantily furnished apartment, with no upholstery, hard chairs, and bare wooden tables; with a globe, scales, compasses, and a few rude domestic articles, writing material, half a dozen maps, and three or four small cabinet pictures on the walls, forming the entire inventory. A large chair in which he ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... and who below—he knew that this was of all pastimes the dearest to Tristram's heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his way as he was conscious that, as regards his obliging friend, he had suffered the warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to abate. Besides, he had no taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite sense of comfort or convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendor, but it was satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair from a soft one, and he possessed ...
— The American • Henry James

... from the doctor's visit, and during the course of the evening succeeded in persuading herself that her fears of the morning were ill-founded and, putting the medicine that was sent her away for the present, she helped herself from a bottle that was hidden in the upholstery. The fact of having a long letter to write to Dick explaining her conduct, made it quite necessary that she should take something to keep her up; and sitting in her lonely room, she drank on steadily until midnight, when she could only just drag her clothes from her ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... county there would have been no petition to disturb him. He would have been as faithful a member as the immortal Toby, M.P. for Barkshire, of Mr. Punch, to whom ever my best regards. Jack considered himself entitled to precedence wherever he went, and maintained it. He was a famous judge of upholstery, and the softest chair or sofa, hearthrug or divan, was instantly appropriated. This sometimes made the local dignitaries sit up a little. They might be accustomed to the dignity of one of her Majesty's ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... into the bar-room of the principal saloon, which, so far as mere upholstery and comfort went, was also the principal house in the settlement. The first rains had commenced; the windows were open, for the influence of the southwest trades penetrated even this far-off mountain ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... Good God! (Mrs. Culver bends down to examine the upholstery of a chair. Culver gives a gesture, first of ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett

... jurists, orators, and battle heroes lent the little social reunions of Springfield a zest and exaltation never found—perhaps impossible—amid the heavy, oppressive surroundings of conventional ceremony, gorgeous upholstery, and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... him in the face: "Who made all that?" So too in Practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have victory in this world, sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the matter; drives straight towards that. When the steward of his Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises, and demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of scissors, clipt one of the gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... at the end of the day, doff their working dress, that they may play a part in richly attired circles. I have no desire that they should be admitted to luxurious feasts, or should get a taste for gorgeous upholstery. There is nothing cruel in the necessity which sentences the multitude of men to eat, dress, and lodge plainly and simply, especially where the sentence is executed so mildly as in this country. In this country, where the demand ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... were lined with costly Bridgeport tapestries in brown and black, picked out here and there with beads and tufts of gloriously coloured wool. The bed curtains were of soft Norwegian yellow, with massive tassels of crab mauve, while the carpet and upholstery were almost entirely Spanish crimson with head-rests of Liverpool plush! It was here, of course, that she wrote ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... leisure to carry them out. I for my part should think it much the reverse of a hardship if I had to read my books and meet my friends in such a place; nor do I think I am better off to live in a vulgar stuccoed house crowded with upholstery that I despise, in all respects degrading to the mind and enervating to the body to live in, simply because I call it my own, ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... design in England, and the consequent ugliness of the various objects in the sight and use of which human beings pass their lives. English furniture, wall-papers, carpets, curtains, cutlery, garments, upholstery, ranged from the tolerable to the hideous, and were inferior to the manufactures of France and Germany. He organized a series of exhibitions on a small scale, somewhat similar to those of the American Institute ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... against the leather upholstery, was Mr. Cortlandt, as pale, as reserved, and as saturnine as at breakfast. He was sipping Scotch-and-soda, and in all the time that Anthony remained he did not speak to a soul save the waiter, did not shift his position save to beckon for another drink. Something about his sour, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... three—one on an easel and one or two on the walls. Gilt frames were abandoned almost entirely, and dark-stained woods were used instead. Wide fireplaces were introduced and mantels of solid oak. For upholstery, leather covering was commonly used instead of cloth. Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This table was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... immediately necessary to adopt a new flag, as the new nation would not use the union jack. Congress appointed a committee, consisting of George Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel Ross, to design a flag. They got Mrs. Betsey Ross, who kept an upholstery shop at 239 Arch Street, Philadelphia, to help plan and to make the new flag. They kept the thirteen stripes of the colonies' flag, and replaced the union jack by a blue field bearing thirteen stars, ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... I had disturbed him. Once he looked behind him at a door with a black curtain before it, as though he contemplated flight to his bedroom. Suddenly he started off on a journey into the darkness and returned with a chair, a gilt thing with a rounded knob of upholstery for a seat. And he asked ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... write the philosophy of chairs. One may retain convictions in furniture which is palpably vertebrate; lapped in billowing upholstery it is a moot question; and like many a caller's before him, Shelby's brain tissue became a jelly of flattered complacency. It sufficed merely to simmer in a sense of equality with the silver-haired gentleman at the desk. The Boss! He had heard that the great man loathed the homely title ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Took up all the rugs, shook 'em. Dug through the upholstery in the furniture, looked back of mat on the wall. It's not in the bric-a-brac, or whatever these ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller

... the Englishman and his luggage were stored away in the carriage. His ticket had been examined by the station-master, and smilingly accepted. There were more bows and salutes, and the carriage drove off. Mr. Guy Poynton leaned back amongst the mouldy leather upholstery, and ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... more fear in this last condition of affairs, more terror in the idea of this prolonged line of sleepers, with their nickelled fittings, their plate glass, their upholstery, vestibules, and the like, loaded down with people, lost and forgotten in the night and the rain, than there had been when ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... side had become. His hands were gripping the arms of the stall, his eyes were fixed upon the spot somewhere behind the curtain where this sudden little drama had been played out, as though indeed they could pierce the heavy upholstery and see beyond into the room where the very air seemed quivering still with the vehemence of the woman's outpoured scorn. Ernestine spoke to him at last, the sound of her voice brought him back with a ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... ponderous engines, like moving mountains of iron, shake the very earth; many-windowed factories, filled with complex machinery driven by water or its vapor, clatter night and day, weaving the plain garments of the poor man and the rich robes of the prince, the curtains of the cottage and the upholstery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... land of frost and snow to the beautiful island of Porto Rico, washed by tropical seas, through the streets of whose capital there passes every day the carriage of the Governor, with its white-covered upholstery and its livery of white. But I add this word: The missionary sent to Porto Rico, be he Catholic or Protestant, must be a man who can stand among statesmen and society men and women, as well as one who can live and work among the humblest ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... Holland's fancy is of a quality which transcends all feigning in others. Whatever it touches it figures in gross material substance, preferably wood or some sort of upholstery. When, however, his hero first stood in Broadway, he seems to have found no fabric of the looms, no variety of plumage, no sort of precious wood or dye-stuff equal to the allegory, and he wreaks himself in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... containing nothing but chairs, and then a small sitting-room, whose furniture, shrouded in white covers, slumbered in the gloom cast by the Venetian shutters, which were always kept closed so as to prevent the light blue of the upholstery from fading. Then came the bedroom, the only one of the three which was really used. It was very comfortably furnished in mahogany. The bed, bulky and drowsy of aspect in the depths of the damp alcove, was really ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... the tree. Whilst the ambition of the wealthy colonist not unfrequently finds vent in building a large house, he has generally been brought up in too rough a school to care to furnish it even decently. His notion of furniture begins and ends with upholstery, and I doubt whether he ever comes to look upon this as more than things to sit on, stand on, lie on, eat off and drink off The idea of deriving any pleasure from the beauty of his surroundings rarely enters into his head, and ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... with gilded chairs, tables, and ottomans. Some of these last had evidently been removed as they became too much out of repair for use or ornament. Such as remained, tarnished as to gilding and worn in the matter of upholstery, stood sparsely scattered on a desert of carpet, whose huge, flowered medallions ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... make many contributions to its upholstery. He was in no position to emulate Sir Henry Irving in forcing and directing the public taste. But he did in America quite as much as Sir Charles Wyndham and Sir Henry Irving in England to elevate the personality, the social and intellectual ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... most amiable and praiseworthy class of travellers who feel a certain moral necessity impelling them to visit every royal abode within their reach. They always see precisely the same things,—some thousand of gilt chairs, some faded tapestry and marvellous satin upholstery, a room in porcelain, and a room in imitation of some other room somewhere else, and a picture or two by that worthy and tedious young man, Raphael Mengs. I knew I would see all these things at Aranjuez, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... floors. The little tables, and the two or three brackets, and the few pictures, and other art-ornaments, that only "strinkled," Barbara said, in two rooms, would be charmingly "crowsy" in one. And up stairs there would be such nice space for cushioning and flouncing, and making upholstery out of nothing, that you couldn't do here, because in these spyglass houses the sleeping-rooms were all bedstead, ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... over a metallic shoulder. Ignoring the squirming man, the 5A gestured toward the Copter, and the other robots swarmed over to it. With a flurry of steel arms and legs they kicked at the car body, wrenched at the propeller blades, ripped out the upholstery, and I heard the ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf

... by its ugliness under an attack of illness. And if an evil state of blood and lymph usually goes along with an evil state of mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... succession of adventures, having no unity of interest whatsoever; and in Aladdin, after the possession of the lamp has been once secured by a pure accident, the story ceases to move. All the rest is a mere record of upholstery: how this saloon was finished to-day, and that window on the next day, with no fresh incident whatever, except the single and transient misfortune arising out of the advantage given to the magician by the unpardonable stupidity of Aladdin in regard to the lamp. But, whilst my sister and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... a sorry one, are not wanting to our young Friend: whatsoever it is in the power of architecture and upholstery to do for him, may be considered withal as done. Wusterhausen is but a Hunting-lodge for some few Autumn weeks: the Berlin Palace and the Potsdam, grand buildings both, few Palaces in the world surpass them; and there, in one or the other ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... him, the church was a concrete and very dull institution: to his father, it was a city set on a hill, whence a shining path led direct to God's New Jerusalem. Therefore it was easy enough for the boy to say he preferred business, and that he wanted uncle Silas to take him into his upholstery shop; and he never, so long as he lived, understood his father's tragic silence over the choice. He had broken the succession in a line of priests; but it seemed to him that he had simply told what he wanted to do for a living. So he went away ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... took place in Ito's office, which Geoffrey had visited once before in his search for the fortune of the Fujinami. The scene of the rendezvous was well chosen to repress any revival of old emotions. The varnished furniture, the sham mahogany, the purple plush upholstery, the gilt French clock, the dirty bust of Abraham Lincoln and the polyglot law library checked the tender word and the generous impulse. The Japanese have an instinctive knowledge of the influence of inanimate things, and use this knowledge with an unscrupulousness, which the crude foreigner ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... Italian had made of it, and, what is more astonishing, how little it had cost him. He had, indeed, painted the walls of the hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two between them had ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... limousine, she realized that she had never ridden in so luxurious a car before. She glanced at the soft upholstery, the bouquet of real flowers, and felt the warmth of the artificial heat. Lily's parents were obviously rich, although the girl evidently gave it little thought now. But Marjorie remembered how impressed her room-mate had been with the fact ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... place is to call your attention to the indented table of Jean Guiton; but she shows you other objects of interest besides. The interior is absolutely new and extremely sumptuous, abounding in tapestries, upholstery, morocco, velvet, satin. This is especially the case with a really beautiful grande salle, where, surrounded with the most expensive upholstery, the mayor holds his official receptions. (So at least said my worthy portress.) ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... resumed his place. The doctor sighed deeply and sank back onto the sofa he had been occupying. The three could see an indentation magically appear in the upholstery of an easy-chair across ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... back may be thickly and prettily upholstered, and then piled high with pillows, or, the wood having been nicely finished, the upholstery may cover the seat only. Be sure and have the seat made low, otherwise the Cozy Corner will be uncomfortable, its name will be belied, and no one will hie to what might have been the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... and Verkan Vall felt himself being pushed gently back against the upholstery. The seats, and the pilot's instrument panel in front of them, swung on gimbals, and the finger of the indicator swept slowly over a ninety-degree arc as the rocket rose and leveled. By then, the high cirrus clouds Verkan Vall had watched ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... in early July a big six-cylinder automobile come sailin' down the road and into the Old Home House yard. A shofer—I b'lieve that's what they call the tribe—was at the helm of it, and on the back seat, lollin' luxurious against the upholstery, was a man and a woman, got up regardless in silk dusters and goggles and veils and prosperity. I never expect to see the Prince of Wales and his wife, but I know how ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... life from a prosperous, well-fed preacher, who was manifestly an acceptable sower of vital seed—seed which took root in brick and mortar, branched out in turret and gable, and flowered before their very eyes in crimson upholstery. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... the saloon. "Good heavens! Isabel, does it take all this to get us plain republicans to Albany in comfort and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I shall never be satisfied with less hereafter," he added. "I am spoiled for ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am a ruinous spendthrift, and a humble three-story swell-front up at the South End is no longer the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... down the brown paper upon the dining-room and Study, and was very helpful and charming, and perfectly enchanted with her home. It is really astonishing what magical changes have been wrought inside the horrible old house by painters, paperers, and carpenters, and a little upholstery. The carpet on the Study looks like rich velvet. It has a ground of lapis lazuli blue, and upon that is an acanthus figure of fine wood-color; and then, once in a while is a lovely rose and rosebud and green ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... fireplace, and sold. All the beautiful paintings which filled the galleries—valued at that day at L80,000—have disappeared, and the whole place is crumbling into dust. No sum short of L100,000 would make the place habitable. Lord Byron's few apartments contain some modern upholstery, but serve only to show what ought to have been there. They are now digging round the cloisters for a traditionary cannon, and in their progress, about five days ago, they discovered a corpse in too ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down the road in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... a spacious and beautifully carved and chiselled bedstead of aethereum, upon which the occupant would find luxurious repose. The deck, or floor, of the apartment was covered with a thick, rich Turkey carpet, the colouring of which matched the upholstery of the furniture; and the ports were draped with costly silk and lace curtains of the finest texture, to soften or exclude the light ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... improbabilities so that there is a perpetual jarring) is maintained throughout the scenery and etceteras. The comfortable but modest accommodations of Ambrose's hotels in Gabriel's Road and Picardy Place are turned into abodes of not particularly tasteful luxury which put Lord Beaconsfield's famous upholstery to shame, and remind one of what they probably suggested, Edgar Poe's equally famous and much more terrible sketch of a model drawing-room. All the plate is carefully described as "silver"; if it had been gold there might have been some ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... actual GUILLOTINE. If you doubt me, go and see—Gale, High Holborn, No. 47. It is a slim instrument, much slighter than those which they make now;—some nine feet high, narrow, a pretty piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook over which the rope used to play which unloosened the dreadful ax above; and look! dropped into the orifice where the head used to go—there is THE AX itself, all rusty, with A GREAT NOTCH IN ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... two friends who chose furniture at the same time. It was the era of black walnut and green rep, and they chose sets looking much alike. But in one case the walnut was elaborately carved,—by machinery, which made it all the rougher,—and there were many little grooves to invite the dust in the upholstery; while in the other case the wood was simply moulded and polished, and the cloth was so put on that one or two vigorous strokes of a brush would cleanse it. It is true that heavy wood carved by hand is beautiful enough to repay us for its care, but that being ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... drawing-rooms, along an unrivaled picture gallery, across a magnificent dining-room, with sideboards groaning beneath their load of massive plate, without paying the slightest attention to the marvels of art and upholstery that were offered to his view. He hurried on, accompanied by the servants who were guiding and lighting him. He lifted heavy articles of furniture as easily as he would have lifted a feather; he moved each chair and sofa from its place, he explored each cupboard ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... instincts, and the compensatory processes where these happen to be thwarted,—on all such topics he is learned and full; whilst, on the science of measurements and proportions, applied to dorsal-fins and tail-feathers, and on the exact arrangement of colours, &c.—that petty upholstery of nature, on which books are so tedious and elaborate,—not uncommonly he is negligent or forgetful. What may have served in later years to quicken and stimulate his knowledge in this field, and, at any rate, greatly to extend it, is the conversation of his youngest brother, Mr. James ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... part of what remains is covered with forest; its many rivers belong mostly to the Rhine system; corn is raised in large quantities, iron and manganese are found, and there are flourishing manufactures of leather, upholstery, tobacco, &c.; the legislative power is vested in two chambers; Mainz is the largest town, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... wildly, desperately kissing one of the golden arms of the throne-chair, on which the old man's poor, bony elbow had just rested. And others, on seeing her, came to dispute possession, seized both arms, gilding and velvet, and pressed their mouths to wood-work or upholstery, their bodies meanwhile shaking with their sobs. Force had to be employed in order to drag ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... quality of the stuffs in which the fully-resurrected bodies of Duerer's saints rumple and rustle. The wings of his angels are at least those of birds, though coloured to fancy, while Angelico's are of pasteboard tinsel and paint. But in spite of the comparative genuineness of his upholstery, as a vision of heaven there can be no hesitation in preferring that ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... time is to be considered only in the second place. Puff himself could tell the actor to turn out his toes, and remind him that Keeper Hatton was a great dancer. We wish that, in our own time, a writer of a very different order from Puff had not too often forgotten human nature in the niceties of upholstery, millinery, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... limp figure showed huddled in the depths of red upholstery. There was a question and a threat in the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... caught a glimpse of—was so overlaid with dust, that, in lack of a visiting card, you might write your name with your forefinger upon the tables; and so hung with cobwebs that they assumed the appearance of dusky upholstery. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... quite comfortable, pretty and unpretentious, with the usual complement of furniture of folding pattern, so convenient but so inartistic, and a superabundance of cane chairs. Really good furniture being very expensive in Teheran, a good deal of the upholstery of the Teheran Legations is conveyed to the country residences for the summer months. Perhaps nothing is more amusing to watch than one of these removals to or from the country. Chairs, tables, sofas, and most private effects are tied ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... wonderful rate. Then vehicles began to be improved, and the restless brain of the inventor contrived a stage-coach for the convenience of those who had no private carriages or did not care to use them; though rude at first, it soon came to be luxurious, with thorough braces, upholstery, and glass windows. But even this noisy vehicle, that abridged distance and brought far cities near together, outgrew its usefulness and gave way to its rival, the steam-car, which could hurry men through the land as on the wings ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... of these establishments were already furnished according to estimate, with a view to the convenience of Dolls of limited income; others could be fitted on the most expensive scale, at a moment's notice, from whole shelves of chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. The nobility and gentry, and public in general, for whose accommodation these tenements were designed, lay, here and there, in baskets, staring straight up at the ceiling; but, in denoting their degrees in society, and confining them to ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... decoration of the walls. The floor is of mosaic in elegant designs, and two alcoves are separated from the apartment by rich hangings of deep green plush, which in certain lights has a shimmer of silver. The furniture frames are of white mahogany in special designs, elaborately carved, and the upholstery is in white and gold tapestry. A superb mantel of Mexican onyx with gold decoration adorns the south wall, and before the hearth is a large rug composed entirely of skins of the eider-down duck, brought from the Arctic regions. Pictures and bric-a-brac everywhere suggest the tribute of loving friends. ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... Away jumped the Monkey! Away leaped the Jack who lived in a Box. At the far end of the toy counter the Bold Tin Soldier and his men had placed some sofa cushions from the upholstery department. That was in case either of the three might ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope

... his first, move me to any degree of interest; but on the walls of one room of the House in the Wood is some of the most charming Chinese embroidery I ever saw, while another is decorated in blue and white of exquisite delicacy. With these gracious schemes of upholstery I shall always associate the Huis ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... record of the little requests which she refuses, from the baby of five, who begged to stand on a chair and look out of the window, and was hastily told, "No, it would, hurt the chair," when one minute would have been enough time to lay a folded newspaper over the upholstery, and another minute enough to explain to him, with a kiss and a hug, "that that was to save his spoiling mamma's nice chair with his boots;" and the two minutes together would probably have made sure that another time the dear little fellow would look out for a paper himself, when ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... you not to enter those rooms, however invitingly the doors may stand open. It is a notion, a whim of mine, that you do not lend your beauty to light up that ghostly collection of old pictures and ugly upholstery, and if you feel ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... natural interest in their surroundings. You will see how true this is if you attempt to rearrange a child's room. Those who have bad taste, relatively, should literally be allowed to make their own beds. On the whole it is preferable to be comfortable in red and green velvet upholstery than to be beautiful and unhappy in a household decorator's ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... again and settled herself back in her place, dragging the scarf from off her head and baring her throat. She looked full at Mr. Iglesias, her face showing ghostly white against the dark upholstery of the carriage. Her eyes were wide with question and with fear, which was also, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... to have forgotten all about ever having been anywhere but in this great, desolate palace, with its halls filled with faded tapestry; stately, solemn furniture, their golden adornments having grown dim, and their upholstery hard; he seemed never to have known any garden but this, only one little corner of which was set apart for the royal family, and through the iron gate of which threatening words were often heard, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... uncleanly physiognomy, he will be inducted into sitting-rooms where the Venetian blinds are kept scrupulously closed, for the double purpose of excluding flies and preventing a too close scrutiny of the upholstery. He will have interviews with landladies of various appearances, ages and characteristics—landladies dubious and dingy, landladies severe and suspicious, (inflexible as to 'references or payments in advance,') landladies calm and confiding, landladies chatty and conciliatory,—the majority ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... get Mis' Cow up the hill and into her stall, where we could provide her with upholstery material. The little pasture across the road was getting green and she presently had the full run of it. The restoring progress began, as it were, overnight. If ever an article of furniture paid a quick ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... young man the next day on the ground she had chosen—amid the chaste upholstery of a New York drawing-room furnished in the fashion of fifty years ago. Morris had swallowed his pride and made the effort necessary to cross the threshold of her too derisive parent—an act of magnanimity which could not fail ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level: bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in summer, in its flat lonesomeness, miles ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... the insect to perform. Having made these preparations, the larva withdraws, strengthening the wooden screen, however, with a layer of fine sawdust; it reaches the end of the round gallery, which is prolonged by the completely choked flat gallery; and here, scorning a special chamber or any upholstery, it goes to sleep for the nymphosis, with its head towards ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... as modern improvements. It had nothing of the kind, and life there was, as in most houses in Italy, a kind of permanent camping out. When I remember the small amount of carpeting, of furniture, and of upholstery we enjoyed, it appears to me pathetic; and yet, I am not sure that it was not the wisest way to live. I know that we had compensation in things not purchasable here for money. If the furniture of the principal bedroom was somewhat scanty, its dimensions were unstinted ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... interior, prosperous, even elegant, according to her simple ideas. There were Brussels carpets, lace curtains, and plenty of brilliant upholstery and ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... other than Ingigerd Hahlstroem was responsible for the direction the barber's thoughts had taken. She had been sitting in the very chair in which he was now reclining. A current streamed from its upholstery into his body. His heart began to beat irregularly, ceasing for an instant, then leaping wildly. To his horror, he observed that Mara's power over him was ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the pleasure of re-stocking the house with linen; of selecting upholstery and curtains and the requisites ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... both, carried away by an irresistible passion, assembled about them a few actors, leading at first a roving life, to end by becoming the delight of the court and of the world. John Baptist Poquelin, who before long assumed the name of Moliere, was born at Paris in 1622; his father, upholstery-groom-of-the-chamber (valet de chambre tapissier) to Louis XIV., had him educated with some care at Clermont (afterwards Louis-le-Grand) College, then in the hands of the Jesuits. He attended, by favor, the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... would be necessary," he coolly added, on reporting to me this fact, "to shoot away the corner of the cabin." I knew that this apartment was newly painted and gilded, and the idol of the poor captain's heart; but it was plain that even the thought of his own upholstery could not make the poor soul more wretched than he was. So I bade Captain Dolly blaze away, and thus we took our hand in the little game, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... car!" This ejaculation was provoked by its interior. John saw that the upholstery consisted of a thousand minute and exquisite tapestries of silk, woven with jewels and embroideries, and set upon a background of cloth of gold. The two armchair seats in which the boys luxuriated were covered with stuff that resembled duvetyn, but seemed woven ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... tall, narrow ledger, its calf binding powdering in a yellow dust, with a blurring label, "Forgebook. Myrtle Forge, 1750." He sat, opening it on the arm of an old Windsor reading chair he had insisted on retaining among the recent upholstery, and studied the entries, some written in a small script with ornamental capitals and red lined day headings, others in an abrupt manner with heavy down strokes. The latter, he knew, had been made by his great ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Fysher's, where the smirking monsieur fills the red upholstery with big-spending American hinds by warbling into their liquored bodies cocoa butter ballades of love and passion, and come over to the untufted Maillol's. And hear Maillol sing for the price of a beer. Maillol's lyrics are not for the ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... furnished with spring and stuffed mattresses, sheets, blankets, and pillows. In their arrangement one notices the influence of personal taste. Embroidered coverlets, hangings and upholstery give to some of the apartments an aspect of comfort and even of elegance. The military administration supplies all the furniture and the regulation bedding, to which the inmates may add what they like at ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various

... fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville Street were piled thick and high over the skeleton up-stairs, and if it ever whispered from under its load of upholstery, 'Here I am in the closet!' it was to very few ears, and certainly never to Miss Podsnap's. What Miss Podsnap was particularly charmed with, next to the graces of her friend, was the happiness of her friend's ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... parlors with upholstery, and put rose-colored paper on their walls, and call them their houses; and shut the little round awfulness and goodness out! We've all been doing it! And there's no place left for ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... better place to live in. He took Bradlaugh and John Burns for his leaders and models, poor, even impecunious, great men. But Miss Haysman thought that such lives were deficient on the aesthetic side, by which, though she did not know it, she meant good wall-paper and upholstery, pretty books, tasteful clothes, concerts, and meals nicely cooked and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... complexions— what do you think of mine? I can't begin to tell all the secrets of the curls and puffs, and reinforcements, hygienic rolls, transformations, fluffy puffers, and all that, or of the complexions. Why, you can choose a complexion, like wall-paper or upholstery. They can make you as pale as a sickly heroine or they can make you as yellow as a bathing girl. There is nothing they can't do. I asked just for fun. I could have come out as dusky as ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... filled the house with intruders. The drive to the cemetery was irritating. She wanted to leap out of the carriage. At first she concentrated on the cushion beside her till she thought of nothing in the world but the faded bottle-green upholstery, and a ridiculous drift of dust in the tufting. But some one was talking to her. (It was awkward Mr. Sessions, for shrewd Mrs. Sessions had the genius to keep still.) He kept stammering the most absurd platitudes about how happy her mother must be in a heaven regarding which he did not seem ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... her place was taken by another young woman, who presented an even more astonishing appearance. This time, the costume was of a sort of tapestry, heavily embroidered in brilliant hued silks. It was not unbeautiful, but it seemed to Patty more appropriate for upholstery purposes than ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... vine-wreathed Bacchuses, winged Apollos and nameless classic nymphs, all staring downward from the spandrels of pointed arches with quite as much at-homeness as Olympian heroes would feel amid the mystic shades of the Scandinavian Walhalla. This room was magnificent with crimson upholstery, upon which rested a multitude of scarlet-embroidered cushions that seemed to the color-loving eye like a dream of plum-pudding after a nightmare of mince-pie. Through this magnificence had drifted, while yet the Leatherstonepaughs saw Rome in all its idealizing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various



Words linked to "Upholstery" :   covering, seat, craft, upholster, trade



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