Pieces

Anonymous French Maker
Embroidery Sample
ca. 1770
silk embroidery on silk velvet
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Embroidery Sample
ca. 1770
silk embroidery on silk velvet
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Maker
Border
ca. 1580-1620
linen (needle lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Valance
ca. 1700
silk embroidery on silk satin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Trimming
19th century
uncut silk velvet on satin ground
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Fabric Border
ca. 1790-1800
block-printed cotton
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Belgian Maker
Border
18th century
linen (bobbin lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Belgian Maker
Cap Streamers
ca. 1700-1725
linen (bobbin lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Belgian Maker
Border with monogram E.P.
ca. 1680-1720
linen (binche-style bobbin-lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Belgian Maker
Border
20th century
linen (point-de-Venise needle lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Belgian Maker
Border
ca. 1870-1920
linen (point-de-gaze needle lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous American Maker
Infant's Cape
1865
broderie anglaise on cotton piqué
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Swiss Maker
Fan Leaf with Alpine Landscape
18th century
linen embroidery on linen
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous British Maker
Border
18th century
linen (Honiton bobbin lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous French Maker
Border in Louis XIV style
ca. 1680-1700
linen (point-de-France needle lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous German Maker
Border with Vase-and-Flower Motif
ca. 1640-50
linen (needle lace)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Cristóbal Balenciaga
Evening Jacket (detail)
1959
embroidered silk tulle
Museo Cristóbal Balenciaga, Getaria, Spain

    Hereupon, not thinking it strange if whatsoever is human should befall me, knowing how Providence overcometh grief and discountenances crosses, and that as we should not despair in evils which may happen to us, we should not be too confident nor too much lean to those goods we enjoy, I began to turn over in my remembrance all that could afflict miserable mortality, and to forecast every accident which could beget gloomy and sad apprehensions and with a mask of horror show itself to human eyes.  Till in the end (as by unities and points mathematicians are brought to great numbers, and huge greatness) after many fantastical glances of the woes of mankind and those encumbrances which follow upon life, I was brought to think, and with amazement, on the last of human terrors, or, as one termed it, the last of all dreadful and terrible evils – Death.  For to easy censure it would appear that the soul, if it can foresee that divorcement which it is to have from the body, should not without great reason be thus overgrieved and plunged in inconsolable and unaccustomed sorrow, considering their near union, long familiarity and love, which are apprehended to be the inseparable attendants of Death. 

    They had their being together; parts they are of one reasonable creature; the harming of the one is the weakening of the working of the other.  What sweet contentment doth the soul enjoy by the senses!  They are the gates and windows of its knowledge, the organs of its delight.  If it be tedious to an excellent player on the lute to endure but a few months the want of one, how much more must the being without such noble tools and engines be plaintfull to the soul!  And if two pilgrims which have wandered some painful few miles together have an heart's grief when they are near to part, what must the sorrow be at the parting of two so loving friends and never-loathing lovers as are the body and soul!

– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)

Belle Époque - I

Louis Anquetin
Woman combing her Hair
1889
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Paul-César Helleu
Portrait of Alice Louis-Guérin at age 14
1884
pastel on canvas
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Isaac Israels
Girl on Donkey
ca. 1898
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Fernand Khnopff
Prince Leopold of Belgium,
Duke of Brabant
1912
oil on canvas
Musée Fin de Siècle, Brussels

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Beach at Villerville with Nanik and Monsieur Plantevigne
1906
gelatin silver print
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

Adolphe Monticelli
Women and Children in a Park
1882
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Berthe Morisot
Girl in a Garden (Isabelle Lambert)
1885
oil on canvas
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Heinrich Zille
Woman on Carousel
1900
gelatin silver print
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Richard Gerstl
Seated Woman
1908
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Paul Scheurich
Vereinigte Werkstätten
1913
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Théo van Rysselberghe
The Blue Hat
1900
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Woman adjusting Hat in Mirror
1911
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Rudi Erdt
Problem Cigarettes
1912
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Miss J. Ranken
1912
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Fritz Rhein
Woman on a Sofa
1905
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pablo Picasso
La Madrilèna
ca. 1901
oil on board
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

And so Dinias begins the narration of these things to an Arcadian named Cymbas, whom the Arcadian League sent to Tyre to ask that Dinias return to them and his homeland.  Since the weight of old age prevented him from doing so, he is represented as recounting what he himself had seen during his wandering or what eyewitness accounts he had heard from others, and what he had learned from Dercyllis's account while on Thule, that is, her already reported journey, and how, after her ascent from Hades with Ceryllus and Astraeus, after she and her brother had already been separated from each other, they arrived at the tomb of the Siren; and what she previously heard from Astraeus, that is, his account of Pythagoras and Mnesarchus – which Astraeus himself heard from Philotis – and the wondrous spectacle relating to his eyes; and Dercyllis's account, when she resumed the story of her own journey, of how she came upon a city in Iberia whose inhabitants see by night but are afflicted by blindness during the day, and of what Astraeus did to their enemies there by playing his flute; and of how, released from there with good wishes, they encountered some Celts, a crude and stupid people, from whom they fled on horses; and of their adventures when the horses' skin changed color.  Then they came to Aquitania, and Dinias recounts the esteem that Dercyllis and Ceryllus and above all Astraeus enjoyed there because the change in the size of the pupils of his eyes signaled the phases of the moon and because he released the kings there from strife over the right to rule; for being two in number, they took turns ruling in accordance with the condition of the moon; for these reasons, the people there rejoiced in Astraeus and his companions.

– Antonius Diogenes, from The Wonders Beyond Thule, written in Greek, 1st-2nd century AD.  A detailed summary of the book was composed (also in Greek) in the 9th century by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.  The original text by Antonius Diogenes was subsequently lost; only the summary by Photius has survived.  This was translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989).

Ornamental Conceits

Cristóbal Balenciaga
Evening Gown (detail)
1966
beaded silk crepe
Museo Cristóbal Balenciaga, Getaria, Spain

Josef Hoffmann
Design for Ornament
ca. 1950-55
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Donald Deskey
Design for Entrance Hall, Perfume Industries Building, New York World's Fair
1939
gouache on black paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Master ES
Ornamental Panel with Wild Man and Wild Woman jousting
ca. 1450-67
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous Mexican Artist
Reliquary Pendant in Tempietto Form
1591
rock crystal, pearls, gold (partly enameled)
British Museum

Stefano della Bella
Ornamental Panel
ca. 1653
etching
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Aloisio Giovannoli after Cornelis Floris the Younger
Grotesque Mask
ca. 1600
etching
British Museum

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Aigrette
ca. 1600-1625
rubies, emeralds, diamonds, enameled gold
British Museum

Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Gallic Cock
1916
painted plaster mounted on wood
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Lucas van Leyden
Ornamental Panel - Sirens and Chimeras
1528
engraving
British Museum

Lelio Orsi
Ornamental Panel with Infant
ca. 1546-54
drawing
British Museum

Cheney Brothers, Manchester, Connecticut
Textile Sample
1913
silk-satin damask
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Master of the Die after Raphael
Putti with Garland
ca. 1530-60
engraving (after a tapestry)
British Museum

Master of the Horse Heads
Ornamental Panel with Dragons and Siren
ca. 1500-1525
engraving
British Museum

Johann Paul Schor
Ornamental Design for Laurel Garland and Scrollwork
ca. 1650-60
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Botanical Ornament
ca. 1780-1820
silk panel with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Folk Motif
ca. 1930-40
silk embroidery sample with beads and faux-straw on wool
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

socle (archit.), base or plinth supporting column, statue, etc.

Socotra, Indian Ocean, not -ora, Sok-

Socrat/es, 469-399 BC, Greek philosopher, not Sok-; adj. -ic

sodium, symbol Na (natrium)

sodomize, not -ise

Sodor and Man (Bp. of); Sodor & Man:, his sig. (one colon)

SOE, Special Operations Executive

SOED, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

soeur/ (Fr. f.), sister, nun; – de charité, a Sister of Mercy

Sofar, sound firing and ranging (under water). See also Sonar

soffit (archit.), under-surface of arch

Sofi, use Sufi

S. of S., Song of Solomon

softa, Muslim student of sacred law (not ital.)

soft copy (comp.) transient reproduction of keyboard input on VDU (two words). See also hard copy

– The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, compiled by the Oxford English Dictionary Department, Oxford University Press (12th edition, 1981)