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Then, all in a moment, the small, faintly- gleaming bit of land ahead became transformed, as it might be with a magician's wand, into a block of deepest, richest purple, bristling with rays of burning gold, a throbbing rim of molten gold swept into view from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of sunlight that flashed across the ocean toward us, transfiguring its erstwhile surface of ebony into a tremble of turquoise and gold, outlining every spar and sail and rope in the ship with thin, golden wires, and causing every bit of glass and polished metal-work to blaze and scintillate with golden fire.
The workers in silver, copper, and brass are many, but their productions are usually rough and inartistic. Genuine old beaten metal-work is almost unobtainable, although occasionally desirable specimens from Leh do find their way into the Srinagar shops.
The hall of reception lay at the other end of the entrance-hall, and was in the form of a square, surrounded within by a colonnade, into which various chambers opened. This was the apartment devoted to the men, in the centre of which was the household fire, burning on an altar-shaped hearth of rich AEginetan metal-work.
It was in this way that the rosette, the cherub, the sacred tree, and the palmette passed to the West, and there served to adorn the metal-work and pottery. New designs, unknown in Babylonia, began to develop; among others, the heads of animals in gold and silver as covers for metal vases.
While Ercole had an insatiable passion for gems and cameos, antique marbles and ivories, Leonora showed an especial taste for gold and silver metal-work. Silver boxes and girdles curiously chased and engraved were constantly sent to the duchess by Milanese goldsmiths, and among the workers in this line whom she frequently employed was Francesco Francia, the goldsmith painter of Bologna.
The accessories of glory, drapery, and open book are highly decorative; here embossed patterns on the gold coverings enhance the richness of the surface-ornament. Once again the Russians appear supreme in metal-work, especially in the elaboration of decoration in the flat.
The old pottery, jewelry, metal-work, rugs and embroideries of the different regions were carefully collected and classified, schools of decorative art were founded, skilled artisans sought out, and every effort was made to urge European residents to follow native models and use native artisans in building and furnishing.
There was but a soft humming note somewhere in the air, and the faintest sense of vibration in the metal-work on which his hands were pressed. Once too he heard a footstep pass softly and rhythmically overhead, as if some watcher moved up and down the length of the upper deck.
The panelling of carved and polished sandal-wood was blotched with foul smudges and chipped with bullet-marks fired in some drunken revelry. Rich velvets and laces were heaped upon the brocaded settees, while metal-work and pictures of great price filled every niche and corner, for anything which caught the pirate's fancy in the sack of a hundred vessels was thrown haphazard into his chamber.
This excellent hoard of suggestive designs for wood-work, metal-work, and work of other sorts, induced Somerset to divert his studies from the ecclesiastical direction, to acquire some new ideas from the objects here for domestic application. Yet for the present he was inclined to keep his sketch-book closed and his ivory rule folded, and devote himself to a general survey.
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