Vase

“ Once, as they were carrying what I thought at first to be an enormous vase, as tall as a man, the moon, for just a second, came from behind a cloud, and its rays were reflected by the shiny surface of the strange object. ”

“ Yes. Are you fond of vases? I love vases. I have all sorts of vases. Have you ever thought of a vase: the shape, the symbol of a vase? No, you don’t know what I mean. Will you come and see me one day, in my rooms? Will you come and lunch: you and your husband? ”

“ We search about amid the sere, yellow skeletons of last summer's ferns, if haply winter have forgotten one green leaf for our home vase—in vain we rake, freezing our fingers through our fur gloves—there is not one. ”

“ You take a Lily-of-the-Valley from its vase, attracted irresistibly by its scent, and find it fast set in a corsetière of steel—each leaf and stalk, almost each separate blossom, wired. This gives you a horrid feeling; you idly untwist the cruel bonds, and then the poor flower droops or falls to pieces.
In the ballroom dreadful things are suffered by the Roses. Fancy a curtain all made of these lovely flowers, wired together in long trails to match the festoons that wave softly overhead! ”

“ To most people, and more particularly to most women, one of the chief uses or functions of a garden is to provide flowers to be cut for the decoration of rooms. But I hold that a flower cut from its plant and placed in a vase is as a scalp on the walls of a wigwam—a trophy showing how one more beautiful plant has been defeated and victimised by its powerful and tasteless owner. ”

“ They see a vase, or a ewer, or a candlestick, of fantastic shape, covered with a thin, greenish-yellow glaze, the coloring not by any means brilliant, and the surface seemingly inlaid and incrusted with the innumerable details of a most elaborate ornamentation, made out in quiet browns, blacks, and sad neutral tints. Nothing is less striking to a casual or an ignorant observer—nothing in the whole range of decorative art so absolutely exquisite in design and effect to the cultivated appreciation of a connoisseur in Renaissance-work. ”

“ A tiny vase no bigger than a thumb-nail, with two gold dragons snarling over its lizard-green surface, an orifice belled like the cup of a flower, and painted on the inside with infinitesimal figures. ”

“ One superb and elegant vase with therms, beautifully enamel’d with figures, the Three Graces on one side and a landscape on the other, in compartments, enriched with chased and burnished gold, and 2 ewer-shape vases to match, figure of Virtue on one side and Prudence on the other. ”

“ The wide-topped jar or vase of bronze or porcelain, or perhaps only of bamboo, in which the flower composition is placed, is in itself almost sufficient decoration for a room, so pure and satisfying are its hues, so deep and cool is its tone, so fine its texture. ”

“ Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
Like the vase, in which roses have once been distilled—
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still. ”

“ Not to be overlooked is the tiny hanging vase found in the simple peasant home—some curious root picked up at no cost and fashioned into a shape suitable to hold a single flower or vine. Such vases could be made with little effort by anyone and find place anywhere in our own land, had we only a keen enough desire to be always surrounded by the beautiful. ”

“ He goes away. The root, snake-like, stretches,
Breaks through the earth, blooms, becomes a shrub;
Each day, farther down, it sinks its fibrous foot,
Until it bursts the sides of the vessel.
The child returns: surprised, he sees the rich plant
Over the vase’s debris brandishing its green spikes ”

“ The young branches are of a fine, purplish brown, producing flowers at the extremity of each; and, when the tree rises to the height of sixty or seventy feet, and each branch holds up its petalled vase of ivory whiteness, as if presenting incense to the sun, it affords an appearance of beauty and grandeur that rivals the proudest productions of man. ”

“ You may crowd a room with the rarest and most expensive flowers, but so arrange them that more than half of the effect of their beauty is lost; and you may have only one flower, but if it be the right kind of flower in the right kind of vase, and placed in just the right spot, your room will appear abundantly decorated and be filled with the beauty and sweetness of the one blossom. ”

“ THE PEBBLE VASE. On this bracket was a little vase, made by the same deft fingers. A broken wine-glass held the water, and the vase was formed around this, of that inexhaustible material, papier-maché, studded all over with bits of colored 118glass and bright pebbles gathered from the sea-shore. From earliest spring till the frost claimed the last lingering blossom, this vase was filled with the fairest flowers of the seasons, and, with the unique little bracket, seemed like a bit of the delightful out-door world transferred to the pleasant corner of the sunny little room. ”

“ A slender youth stands next; his shoulders are raised, for the pipes are to his lips, his feet are drawn close together, and by him a satyr dances wildly, clashing cymbals as he dances. He is followed, I think--it is difficult to say whether this be a recollection of another vase or whether the figure is included in the same group--by a faun tempting the teeth and claws of a panther with a bunch of grapes. And it was this winsome faun that decided me to select this vase as the repository of my ashes. And I determined to stipulate in my will that this vase be chosen. ”

“ She insists upon doing everything that I do. When I do the flower vases, she does a flower vase, and invariably spills the water and scatters the petals on the carpet, and not infrequently breaks the vase. ”

“ They are never, as so often on modern vases, detached pieces stuck on the vase as a kind of afterthought. Rather, they seem to grow out of the vase like branches from a tree, which gives them a wonderful, living quality. ”

“ The vase, wherein time’s roots are plung’d, thou seest,
Look elsewhere for the leaves. O mortal lust!
That canst not lift thy head above the waves
Which whelm and sink thee down! The will in man
Bears goodly blossoms ”

“ The artist put all his love into the vase, and he hoped that when it was done, he could obtain a Court position. He was very patient with the countless polishings, and one afternoon, when the air was sweet with the odour of the cherry blossoms, the last touches were put upon it. ”

“ We have similarly, in the faience vases of Haviland now under consideration, constant hints of inspiration drawn from the simplest forms of nature. A branch falls upon a vase and becomes its ornament. A butterfly hangs for a moment on fluttering wing and drops from its flight, and it too becomes an ornament. The workman leaves his unfinished work at night, and when he returns at day-break, finds that a lizard or an asp has crept upon the still slimy vase to bask itself in the first rays of the morning sun. It darts out of sight, but it has left an idea which appears in the decoration ”

“ Set the stump in a flower-pot saucer, filled with earth, and planted with mosses and tiny ferns; fit a footless wine or champagne glass, or a plain cup, into the hollow end, and, with a bunch of grasses and wild flowers, or autumn leaves, you have a really exquisite vase, prettier than any formal article bought in a shop, [page 49] and costing little more than time and patience, with a touch of that rare thing—taste! which, after all, is not so very rare as some people imagine. Any friend will prize such a vase of your own making. ”

“ A little plant, a species of vernal grass, is a powerful element in this veiled harmony; it cannot be worn with impunity; take into your hand its shining blade, striped green and white like a silken robe, and mysterious emotions will stir the rosebuds your modesty keeps hidden in the depths of your heart. Round the neck of a porcelain vase imagine a broad margin of the gray-white tufts peculiar to the sedum of the vineyards of Touraine, vague image of submissive forms ”

“ Cut it with a good deal of foliage, and be careful to give each stalk ample room in which to adjust itself. A vase with a flaring top is what this flower ought to have, as its stalks have just the curve that fits the flare. A straight vase obliges it to stand up so primly that half the charm of the flower is destroyed.
For late fall cutting, there is no other flower quite equal to the Cosmos. The pink and white varieties are lovely when cut by the branch, and used in large vases. ”

“ It is true I live a wretched life, but I amuse myself trying to produce a perfect vase. I have broken thousands. If a shape answers my expectations, that very shape is certain to crack in the burning or run in the glaze. ”

“ People who have progressed in civilisation show their feeling for art and their æsthetic feeling also in vases which are multiplied in almost infinite form, as we see in Egyptian, Etruscan, and Greek art.
The vase then comes into being, attains perfection, and is multiplied in its uses and its forms, in the course of human civilisation; and the history of the vase follows the history of humanity itself. ”

“ In the careful arrangement of flowers your object should always be to bring out their whole beauty, and let all else be secondary to that. One vase, though beautiful in itself, may not be at all suitable for holding flowers, while another, of no value as an ornament, will display them to their best advantage. ”

“ The Dodwell vase shows you the more simple style of decoration which was used in the earlier times. Gradually the designs came to be more and more elaborate, until whole stories were as distinctly told by the pictures on vases as if they had been written out in books. The next cut, which is made from a vase-painting, will show what I mean.
The subject of Fig. 16 is connected with the service of the dead, and shows a scene in the under world, such as accorded with ancient religious notions. In the upper portion the friends of the deceased are grouped around a little temple. ”

“ Equally so is the exquisite vase which accompanied the messages of congratulation and is to commemorate them, and upon which not a few of the flowers associated with may name or with my special studies are so deftly wrought by art, that of them one may almost say, “The art itself is nature.” ”

“ Northern symbolism, always deeper and more complicated than that of the South, required that the vase which contained the lilies should be transparent, thus indicating the perfect purity of the body which enshrined the soul of perfect innocence. ‘In so far that the glass allows all surroundings to shine through without being itself harmed, it has become the symbol of the Immaculate Conception. ”

“ Peel off the outside petals and, grasping each bud, in turn, near its base with the thumb and first two fingers, gently work it back and forth until it is loosened and can be removed entire without damage. Stand each vase on a level surface and gather spears of grass to place in them. Push some of the grass ends down into the vases, but do not crowd them; have only two or three in each vase (Fig. 547) . The pink color of the vase will contrast pleasingly with the green of the grass, and the feast will be laden with the delicate perfume of roses. ”

“ With a passing sigh for the bouquet abandoned in the field and probably withered by this time, she managed to get enough flowers from the overgrown neglected garden near the house to fill the really lovely colonial glass vase she had discovered that morning. ”

“ The vase is painted white to show that it is as yet unglazed. A pair of calipers is hanging on the wall ready for use, to enable the potter to check the heights and widths of his products. To the right a youth is carefully carrying away a vase that has just been thrown, to dry. A similar vase is already standing on the other side of a column, drying in the open air or in a court. Both vases are painted white to indicate their unglazed condition. Next we see an old man walking leisurely with a stick. His dignified air is in strong contrast to the busy absorption of the workmen. ”

“ Though many a flower may win my praise,
The violet has my love;
I did not pass my childish days
In garden or in grove:
My garden was the window-seat,
Upon whose edge was set
A little vase—the fair, the sweet—
It was the violet. ”

“ Smith.
Mrs. Emerson agreed to that.
"The choice of vases is almost as important as the choice of flowers," she added. "If the stems are beautiful they ought to show and you must have a transparent vase, as you said about the rose. If the stems are not especially worthy of admiration the better choice is an opaque vase of china or pottery."
"Or silver or copper?" questioned Margaret.
"Metals and blossoms never seem to me to go well together," confessed Mrs. Emerson. ”

“ Stands for Vases are to be had of various forms and materials. Those formed of turned wood have the preference for elegance and safety; and, as the knob of the vase fits loosely in the depressed top of the stand, the vase can be turned round for inspection. ”

“ SIC VITA [1]
'It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself.'—The Week. ”

“ The balsam that is contained in an earthen vase is as sweet as that in a vase of crystal.
SPIRITUAL FLOWERS.
Most yellow flowers keep turned continually to the sun, but the sunflower turns not only its flowers but also its leaves towards the great luminary. ”