Marble table

“ We are taken into the one long room with a long table and many maple-golden doors, alternate panels having a wedge-wood blue-and-white picture inserted—a would-be Goddess of white marble on a blue ground, like a health-salts Hygeia advertisement. ”

“ Typical drawing-room tables are shown on Plate XLIII. It is very rarely that a table of gilded wood is met with in a drawing-room or petit salon. Solid or veneered tables of rosewood, amaranth, violet-wood or mahogany, decorated with brass-work or gilded copper, are the favourites. Sometimes the top consists of a marble slab, and sometimes a square of velvet or cloth is framed in a border of wood ornamented with a metal moulding ”

“ Frames and brackets for marble slabs, picture frames and frames for looking-glasses, girandoles, sconces, etc., etc., appealed very naturally to the carver. The very charming bracket, No. 1 on Plate XLII. with its frets, its scrolls, shells, roses, and leaves, which was, of course, intended for gold leaf, is very simple when compared with the girandoles and mirrors, of which Chippendale has given so many examples. One frame for a marble slab (really a console table) he evidently likes. It is “supported by two piping Fauns, leaning against two vines, intermingled with foliage, etc. ”

“ Arrived at the summit, a square chamber is found furnished with seats, which have the backs and arms of living verdure, and in the centre is a small table of marble, with a vase thereon, also of varicoloured marble, and whence, by means of a tube, a copious jet of water is cast high into the air ”

“ In Figure 25 is shown an unusually elegant marble-topped parlor table. The profuse carving is in Chippendale's very best style, not flamboyant, but elegant and graceful. On each of the long sides is a grotesque mask, and the legs, carved over the knees with shells and flowers in low relief, end in a ball-and-paw, the hair on the foot being most delicately carved. The [Pg 70] wood is dark, rich mahogany; the marble top is of brown tint with light veinings. This fine piece is at Memorial Hall, Philadelphia. ”

“ This shield is of the most exquisite workmanship. The other is a table of the most beautiful black marble incrusted and inlaid with figures and hieroglyphics of silver. It is called the Table of Isis, was brought from Egypt and is supposed to be of the most remote antiquity. It is always kept polished. Among the many valuable pieces of sculpture to be met with here is a most lovely Cupid in Parian marble. He is represented sleeping on a lion's skin. It is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen next to the Apollo Belvédère and the Venus dei Medici ”

“ On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished. ”

“ The set includes bedstead, dressing-case, wash-stand, towel-rack, a small table, two common chairs, and a rocker. The more expensive sets have the English wash-stand. No marble is used with the finest chamber furniture. ”

“ It is rather richly carved with figures, which are sometimes much praised, but which seemed to me (with the exception of a Pietà over the south-west doorway) to be of poor style and character. Going round to the side of the building, the design is of earlier date and much more interesting. The aisle-windows are noble designs of four-lights in each bay, separated by buttresses and surmounted by steep-pitched gables. The detail is an extremely good combination of brick and stone, whilst a magnificent plinth of stone and{292} marble gives great force to the work. ”

“ This type of garden furniture is perfectly well adapted to Italian, English, or Colonial types of architecture, and is constructed often of marble. It is not merely an ornament but a useful adjunct to a garden, and can be made of concrete, or cobblestone, if one does not wish to go to the expense of using marble. ”

“ Everything is of marble, white marble, whose immaculate whiteness shines in the azure. On all sides are large solid forms, the cupola, the full wall, the balanced stories, the firmly-planted round or square mass; but over these forms, revived from the antique, like delicate foliage that clothes an old tree-trunk, there is spread an individual invention and a new decoration of the small columns surmounted by arcades, and the originality and grace of this architecture thus renewed cannot be described. ”

“ The spectator’s mind is not bewildered by a jumble of elaboration, but passes quietly from one impression to another. On entering the Entrance Hall, for instance, marble is beneath our feet and on all sides of us. The impression is instantaneous, irresistible, and entirely undistracted. In the adjoining halls, the prevailing theme is varied by the colors of the marble mosaic vaults, which assert their own beauty at the same time that they modestly bring the painted compositions of the tympanums into color-relation with the grey-white marble walls. ”

“ Bases for statues may be built of wood, and should be provided with strong casters, so that it will be possible to move them in cleaning without too great difficulty. Marble bases are excessively expensive and rarely an improvement. Should square marble shafts be used for the mounting of busts, however, it is well to remember that the grain of the marble on two sides will show long stripes of color and on the other two sides, tiny flecks. ”

“ Each piece of stone fits the others so perfectly that there was no need of bolts or anything to hold it in place. It stands upon a pedestal four feet high and is crowned with a low white dome of polished metal. The walls of this wonderful building are pillars of marble inclosing panels of the same material sawed in very thin slabs and perforated in exquisite geometrical patterns. No two panels are alike; there is no duplication of design on the pillars; every column is different; every capital and every base is unique. ”

“ The lower walls are built of alternate layers of differently colored stones, into which are set mosaic panels as intricate in design as the priceless rugs which lie upon the marble pavement. The woodwork of the room is all minutely carved, and inlaid with bits of glass and mother-of-pearl and sometimes even with jewels. The upper walls are frescoed in blue and green and gold, and from the gilded beams of the ceiling hang chandeliers of silver and beaten brass. ”

“ Each slab of white marble is wrought in rich tracery in the most delicate manner, pierced through and through so as to be the same when seen from either side; the pattern of each slab differs from the next one, and the rich variety, as well as beauty of the designs, fixes the attention of the beholder in amazement at the taste and patient skill that could originate and execute this vision of beauty, which seems like an imagination rising before the fancy, and then, by some wondrous wand of power, transmuted into a solid form forever, to be touched, and examined, and admired. ”

“ The enrichment of the whole front, from the lower plinth to the string course under the first gallery, with bas-reliefs, panelled pilasters, niches, medallions and other decorative accessories, all in white marble, so completely covers the whole surface that scarcely any portion is left plain, which to a certain extent detracts from its effect as a whole; but there is an endless variety of design, and the baluster or candelabrum shafts dividing the windows and the friezes and cresting above their cornices, are of great beauty. ”

“ It is of white marble, and approaches to life not only in size but in strength of expression: the accuracy of the anatomy, the grandness of the heads, and the force of the limbs, are not to be excelled.
Ascending to the hall, we found ourselves in a room superlatively fine, from the grandeur of its dimensions, the justness of its proportions, the taste of its decorations, and the beauty of its contents. The architect has chosen the square figure, sixty feet everyway, relieved by an height of thirty-eight feet; and a gallery, which runs round the whole, and projects ten feet. ”

“ If you build in marble you must either carve it into joyous decoration, like the lives of dancing children that adorn the marble castles of the Loire, or fill it with beautiful sculpture, frieze and pediment, as the Greeks did, or inlay it with other coloured marbles as they did in Venice. Otherwise you had better build in simple red brick as your Puritan fathers, with no pretence and with some beauty. Do not treat your marble as if it was ordinary stone and build a house of mere blocks of it. ”

“ You grow fond even of the old benches of red marble, partly worn away by the breeches of many generations and attached to the base of those wide pilasters of which the precious plating, delightful in its faded brownness, with a faint grey bloom upon it, bulges and yawns a little with honourable age. ”

“ Associated with Mosaic decoration in the Byzantine Period was the employment of marble in shafts of columns and for lining walls by banding or slabbing, frequently quartered, so as to display the markings in reciprocal forms. Such marbles were chosen for figuring and colour, the former in its variety being an important factor in the surface interest.
Similar employment of slabs occurs in the treatment of floors, where contrast in colour is the chief consideration. ”

“ Now, on the wall, these pieces are mere flat slabs cut to the arch outline; but under the soffit of the arch the marble mail is curved, often cut singularly thin, like bent tiles, and fitted together so that the pieces would sustain each other even without rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub-arch of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of the wall; and the reader will see, in Fig. LVII., that its edge forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (b) , a band which the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative feature. ”

“ The Marble Flooring.—Before leaving the Vestibule, the visitor may be interested to notice the design of the marble flooring. The body of it is white Italian, with bands and geometric patterns of brown Tennessee, and edgings of yellow mosaic. It will be seen at once that the design is harmonious with the lines of the arcade and the ceiling. These are not slavishly mimicked, but are developed, varied, and extended. Sometimes a circle is used to [23] draw together two opposite arches; sometimes a square echoes the pattern of the ceiling ”

“ The twisted shafts of the upper stage of the Ducal Palace, and the triple and chevroned shafts of the Ca’ d’Oro, are not improvements upon the refinement of the earlier mode.
I have already spoken of the exquisite beauty of the inlaid marbles in S. Mark’s; nothing can be better than their effect, and nothing seems more wonderful than that they should not have been used more frequently in later buildings. I was, perhaps, a little disappointed in not finding, as I had expected, the marble arranged generally in geometrical patterns ”

“ The posts are narrow towards the outside, and the ends of the architrave rest on thin pieces against the jambs.
The ‘breast-wall’ at the bottom of the opening and the ‘lattice-work’ are formed of marble, three inches thick. [Pg 169] The openings pierced in the slabs are about seven or eight inches high, filled with panes of glass. Between the panes the marble has a width of three and a half inches, slightly splayed on the inside. A second row of slabs fills the lower part of the windows pierced with openings, surrounded by wider margins. ”

“ The detail of the work in this front is of great interest, inasmuch as it is clearly by another and an earlier workman than that of the western part of the church. There are three shafts in each jamb of the doors, whereof the outer are of marble, the rest of stone. These marble shafts are carved with extreme delicacy with a series of figures in niches, the niches having round arches, which rest upon carved and twisted columns separating the figures. The work is so characteristic as to deserve illustration. ”

“ The slabs of rich marble were loose and broken, about the edges of the fountains; the rich painting of the wood-work was beginning to fade; and the balustrades leading to the upper chambers were broken off in places. We were ushered into a room, the walls and ceilings of which were composed entirely of gilded arabesque frame-work, set with small mirrors. When new, it must have had a gorgeous effect; but the gold is now tarnished and the glasses dim. The mistress of the house was seated on the cushions, dividing her time between her pipe and her needle-work. ”

“ A piece of white marble often forms the centre to some device; where the flooring in a garden happens to be uniform in colour, a pattern is formed by a sprinkling of sand, which seems to lie as a part of the flooring unmoved under a fresh blowing wind.... ”

“ Time, who is so intelligent, has passed his thumb over the angles of the marble and its too rigid outlines, and given the finishing touch, the last degree of polish, to this sculpture, already so soft and so supple. I particularly remember a staircase of the most fairy-like elegance, with marble columns, balustrades and steps, already half-crumbled away, conducting to a door which looks out upon an abyss, for this portion of the edifice has fallen down. ”

“ The striking feature is the great quantity and variety of rich marbles in every part. One of the staircases is entirely formed of different kinds of rare marble, the effect being extra-ordinarily imposing. Elsewhere, a room is divided by Corinthian columns of jasper and porphyry, and on every side are displayed a wealth and splendour in this respect quite unique. Without doubt, nothing lends such magnificence to interiors as marbles, but they require the spaciousness and princeliness of such a château to be displayed to advantage. ”

“ Marble, from its costliness, and the difficulty of working it, is seldom, if ever, used in solid pieces in buildings; thin facings of it are set upon stone backings, much as rare woods are used in veneering by the cabinet-maker. The marble is sawn into thin slabs, like other stone, and the face is polished by rubbing on it the surface of another piece, fine sand, mixed up with water, being used to cause abrasion. ”