Marble (toy)

“ Then childlike artist grown
He craved for form, and from the shapes around
Contorted fair the figure of himself,
Moulded his deities in wood and stone
Around his bed, his banquet board, his tomb
As yet a bungler, but when youth infused
Into the sap and marrow of his brain
The vernal subtleties of love, he dreamed
Of gods as fair as he himself would be,
Majestic, abstract, yet with solid power
To make a goddess tremble; and behold,
Under the yearning passion of his thought
The embryonic marble sloughed its shell,
And gods of strength and beauty trod the earth,
Their foreheads high in heaven. ”

“ It is wonderful to walk slowly about this marble, to follow the long line that curves about the richly unfolded roundness of the back to the face that loses itself in the stone as though in a great weeping, and to the hand which like a broken flower speaks softly once more of life that lies deep under the eternal ice of the block. ”

“ The delicate mellowness of the antique marble admirably mocked the tint of human flesh;—a tropical glow, a golden warmth seemed to fill the motionless miracle—this dream of love frozen into marble by a genius greater than Praxiteles ”

“ 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. ”

“ Michael, St. George and the Virgin Mary roughly carven upon a marble slab by some unknown hand in the seventeenth century. A thin vein of water flowed from the torrent above into the fountain with a tinkling sound that broke the silence very sadly. How desolate in the stillness looked the interminable lines of marble hills stained with burnt thyme and furze, the great jagged rocks tinted with gold and red and purple and grey, forked against the sapphire sky, and the dim grey glades of olives below! Desertion lay upon all, and the beauty was the beauty of neglect and barrenness. ”

“ Far from weighing them down, the marble that envelops them throws about them the charm of the indeterminate and by means of this unites them with the atmosphere. The parts that are wholly disengaged enable one to divine those that remain hidden; they are veiled without being obliterated, like mountain-tops among the clouds; and this half-mystery, instead of diminishing, increases the harmony of the bodies trembling with life under their mantle of stone. ”

“ Not far off we see another youth at work on a block of marble, similar in every detail to the first. The tools with which he plies his labor differ in no wise from those of the worker we have been following.
The glory of the morning shines upon the marble. Glowing with enthusiasm, the light of a high purpose illuminating his face, the sculptor, with steady hand and eye, begins to work out his ideal. The vision that flits before him is so beautiful that he almost fears the cunning of his hand will be unequal to fashioning it from the rigid mass before him. ”

“ The marble is pliant at her magic touch, and seems to breathe a pious life. The chiselled stone is instinct with a living soul, and stands there, silent, yet full of hymns and prayers; an embodied aspiration, a thought with wings that mock at space and time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We stand on the banks beside fluted columns of snow-white marble, and see broken marble everywhere near. That man who ploughs on the southern ridge of the sand turns up marble bits at every step of his bullocks, and the girls behind him, who are planting, uncover stones from the temple at almost every stroke of their hoes. ”

“ Marble, too, takes on the warm golden tint of the sunset, and is stained by time with a russet hue that brings it into partnership with the common rocks, with which all things make friends—the mosses, the lichens, the vines and birds. ”

“ Up to the highest quarries the road is steep, and strewn with broken marble, and after that there is an hour's scramble through bushes and over a rocky path. From these quarries was hewn the marble for the Temple of Theseus, the Parthenon, the Propylæ, the theaters, and other public buildings, to which age has now given a soft and creamy tone; the Pentelic marble must have been too brilliant for the eye, and its dazzling luster was, no doubt, softened by the judicious use of color. ”

“ For not only are whole walls now covered with marble, but the marble itself is carved out or marqueted so as to represent objects and animals of various kinds. No longer now are we satisfied with formal compartitions of marble, or with slabs extended like so many mountains in our chambers, but we must begin to paint the very stone itself! ”

“ All is in white marble, and the sculpture is of exquisite delicacy: foliage, figures of every description are there in lavish profusion. The pillars are coupled, some twisted, some plain. The very bases are enriched with ornament. ”

“ This marble is the most difficult of all to work, because it is the hardest; it is particularly difficult to fashion the more delicate forms in it without the chisel damaging or cracking them; if you do manage, though after much effort, to bring them off in this stone, they look lovely. I have found that the grain gradually softens through the five different sorts above-mentioned, & the softest of all I have found verging in colour to a delicate flesh tint rather than a white. This sort is the most cohesive, the most beautiful and the tenderest marble in the world to work in. ”

“ I said the pavement was stone—it is all of marble. About it sat many flower-sellers, men in white, red and black robes with baskets heaped with orange-coloured marigolds, blue cornflowers, pink roses and scarlet poppies. The silver doors stand open, and through the white marble gateway a constant stream of people come and go along the causeway with its rows of golden lamps on short marble standards leading to the Golden Shrine itself in the middle of the water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This consists of rectangular expanses of polished marble where the light rests with a soft, milky splendour. One would never imagine that so simple a thing as surface could be so beautiful when it is large and pure. ”

“ If too much colour (black) is thrown on, the result will be an invisible marble, or, as I once heard it expressed by a workman, "it could not be seen on account of the fog;" if too little, no matter how nicely the marble is formed, it will be weak and feeble.
Marbling on leather is produced by small drops of colouring liquids, drawn, by the flowing of water down an inclined plane, into veins and spread into fantastic forms resembling foliage—hence, often called tree-marble. ”

“ It may be likened to a block of marble raised out of the quarry—rough and rude in outline, massive in solidity and strength, but giving no indication of the grace into which it will grow under the hand of the sculptor. What art effects upon the marble block, Nature accomplishes upon the surface of the land. ”

“ Taxater, “that, I think, is an admirable symbol of what this place represents. Clay at the top and sandstone at the bottom! I wonder whether it is better, in this world, to be clay or stone? We four poor foreigners have, I suspect, a preference for a material very different from both of these. Our element would be marble. Eh, Andersen? Marble that can resist all these corrupting natural forces and throw them back, and hold them down. I always think that marble is the appropriate medium of civilization’s retort to instinct and savagery. The Latin races have always built in marble. ”

“ The more colors are used for the drawn marble, the less of each color except black should be thrown on the size. Although the colors have been adapted to each other in regard to their power of expansion before using them, it is indispensable in producing these marbles with such a large [132] number of colors to assist the expansion of one color or the other by a few drops of ox-gall. ”

“ In a marble country one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of marble; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock cleft itself only for the sake of being built with conveniently.
Plate X.—Marble Masonry in the Duomo of Verona.
[Pg 377]
152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials—Clay, and Stone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. ”

“ The marble tower, again, is a great building, on which we devise devious slanting ways down which marbles run. I do not know why it is amusing to make a marble run down a long intricate path, and dollop down steps, and come almost but not quite to a stop, and rush out of dark places and across little bridges of card: it is, and we often do it. ”

“ This is more intensely black than any of our modern marbles; it is extremely scarce, occurring only in sculptured pieces. The red antique marble, Egyptum of the ancients, and Rosso antico of the Italians, is a beautiful marble of a deep blood-red colour, interspersed with white veins and with very minute white dots, as if strewed over with grains of sand. ”

“ Human faces of gold, silver, bronze, even marble—that ugliest of all stones, in its natural state—do not worry us.
In fact when we look at marble sculpture we are in the attitude of the man who ordered the painting of the bamboo forest. We are so accustomed to seeing ghostly white marble busts and statues we actually resent it if the sculptor stains or colors the marble not to make it more realistic, but to make it more beautiful. ”

“ But as most houses and buildings are now warmed, this need not stand for much, and if we panel our rooms below with wood, there is no reason why the upper part should not be of marble. Marbles are of every hue except blue, for blue Beige is black and white, and blue Napoleon, or imperial, is but bluish gray; and brown is scarce, though we have rosewood marble and Californian spar. Marbles are found in most countries of the world, and there are such vast varieties in Europe that they can hardly be catalogued. ”

“ While moulding the figure and features upon a scale almost heroic, nature had jealously guarded the symmetry of her work, and in addition to the perfect proportion of the statuesque outlines, had bestowed upon the firm white flesh a gleaming smoothness, suggestive of fine grained marble highly polished. ”

“ The finest modern marbles are those of Italy, Blankenburg, France and Flanders. In some of the Western Islands of Scotland, very fine specimens of this fossil have lately been discovered. When chemically examined, marble consists of calcareous earth united with fixed air; and is, like lime-stone, or chalk, convertible into a strong quick-lime.—Black marble derives its colour from a partial admixture of iron. ”

“ Whatever of illusive representation can be effected in marble, they are capable of achieving, if the object be before their eyes. The sculptor has but to present these men with a plaster cast of his design, and a sufficient block of marble, and tell them that the figure is imbedded in the stone, and must be freed from its encumbering superfluities; and, in due time, without the necessity of his touching the work with his own finger, he will see before him the statue that is to make him renowned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By a little practice, though, the student will find no great difficulty in representing it correctly. It is a marble which presents in any of its forms a beautiful appearance, and one which the operator is pretty sure to be called upon to reproduce, therefore he should spare no pains to study it well and to practice what he has learned in order to be ready for any emergency. The ground is an invisible green made of black with a trifle of yellow added. ”

“ Judges say it is a first class, almost pure sychrine marble, easily and freely worked, and susceptible of a very high polish. The advantages and facilities for working these marbles are such as are possessed by no other marble quarries in the world. ”