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That’s Santa Maria della Salute—they call it Santa Maria della Volute instead of Salute because it’s all covered with volutes.” Maida smiled sunnily into Mrs. Lathrop’s face as if expecting sympathy with this architectural joke. But Mrs. Lathrop did not smile. She looked a little staggered. She studied Maida for a long time out of her shrewd, light eyes.
And yet we cannot say that they showed any lack of originality or invention in their choice of decorations for the bases and capitals of their columns. Their favourite motive seems to have been the volute, to which, however, they gave an endless variety.
This led to an investigation by the manager, and the scheme was forbidden. "This instrument, many years afterward, was applied by me for transferring messages from one wire to any other wire simultaneously, or after any interval of time. It consisted of a disk of paper, the indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disk phonograph to-day.
Here at Chateau Desir, in the panelling of the old hall, might you see fantastic scrolls, separated by bodies ending in termini, and whose heads supported the Ionic volute, while the arch, which appeared to spring from these capitals, had, for a keystone, heads more monstrous than those of the fabled animals of Ctesias; or so ludicrous, that you forgot the classic griffin in the grotesque conception of the Italian artist.
Two things seem fairly certain as to the origin of this capital; first, that it was derived from the wooden horizontal head-pieces fixed on posts to reduce the bearing of the primitive wooden lintels; and, secondly, that the first suggestion of the volute reached the Ionian Greeks from the East.
The trained mind, alone, more discerning than our retina, sees clearly that which defies the perceptive faculties of the eye. The Epeira complies to the best of her ability with this law of the endless volute. The spiral revolutions come closer together as they approach the pole.
Thus the interior of the peg-box will be found a convenient position from which to build a support that shall reach up underneath the volute or under turn of the scroll. Having well tried the parts as to the fitting, the support or prop may be secured or glued in roughly to the lower surface of the peg-box presuming of course that the pegs have all been removed and left to dry hard.
They have naturally, therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference that their ancestors, in painting the volute, had intended to symbolize the whirlwind by representing his tracks. By combining several of these elementary symbols in a single device, sometimes a mythic idea was beautifully expressed.
Some of these, of the most dazzling beauty, were placed round the pipe, which had been plastered with clay; from thence the water was received into a volute, shaped like an antique urn, and again was poured gracefully into the large turtle-shell; a small channel conveyed it then out of the pavilions.
It is curious to see the baskets and buckets used here. The cockles are brought in large volute shells, probably the Cymbium ducale, while gigantic helmet-shells, a species of Cassis, suspended by a rattan handle, form the vessels in which fresh water is daily carried past my door.
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