Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1893-07-21

~ worth $500 in addition to the statue. A
vase of white and sienna marble, only
three feet high, is worth $1,000 for every
foot of its altitude. Some remarkable
combinations of marble and bronze are
shown. The head, arms and feet OF a
negro girl are of bronze, while the drapery
is fashioned of two distinct marbles, but
all so deity joined that the whole looks as
if it was carved out of one piece. It puz.
zles one to understand how a marble drap.
cry could be wrapped about bronze should.
ers without a break.
The laces are most fascinating to the
women visitors, and the man who cannot
a interest in these glorious creations of
the needle has no art in his soul. Some of
the most beautiful things in this EXPOSE
ton are fabrics, and here it is that com.
merce commands art and makes of her q
worthy handmaiden. But of all the
fabrics, the Gobelin tapestries not ex-
eepted, the Venetian laces are the loveliest.
A Venetian firm has erected here a large
pavilion for display Of its laces. The struc.
ture itself is of lace, at least in its showv
part. Within are laces ranging in value
from Q cents to 81, 900 a yard. The cheaper
laces approximate machine manufacture,
being made with q bobbin, and really are
not as fine as our American or the Euro.
pean machipe-made stuff. The finer laces
are all made with a needle, and a yard of
the thousand dollar lace is said to have oc.
cupied the time of one woman for three
years.
The lace-makers of Venice are fairly
born into the trade, spend their lives in It
and die in it. There are photographs here
which show the women at their work.
nearly always on the galleries in front of
their suburban houses. AS agirl the lace
maker earns perhaps 20 cents a day. When
she is able to take up the finer work she
may earn from 40 to so cents, and as a
masterworkman, so to speak, her stipend
will be 60 cents a day. The firm making
this exhibit employs over 1000 women.
Here are exquisite little doylies, about
six inches square, selling at 81. 80 each.
A table cloth and a dozen napkins to
match are marked $3.50, and are cheap at
that figure. Three and a half yards of
founce and two and a half yards of mar
rover edging to match, six yards alto
gether, are worth $1,000. A pair of en-
broideried curtains, draped over an inn
provised window, have a value of $500.
Both curious and beautiful is a piece of
polychrome lace, body of black and all the
colors and tints of the rainbow are woven
into it.
There are many other lines of work in
which the Italians show their patience.
their true art instinct, their lightness of
touch. Their mosaics are marvellous.
Many ornamental pieces of furniture are
of ebony fnlaid with silver, gold or other
material. The workmanship is elaborate
and intricate, but the result is not allur-
ing to the American taste. More interest
Ing are the specimens of flowers, portraits
and figures produced by inlaying colored
marbles in a slab of white. The effect is
like that of a good oil painting. The art
list often spends month, it is said, looking
for a single piece Of marble, perhaps no
larger than q finger nail, which has lust
the tint wanted for q particular place.
These are the famous Florentine mosaics.
In front of the Italian pavilion, which is
one Of the most beautiful in the building,
are seen two new and notable pieces of art
tile work. They are mosaics in mafolica
ware, made by q Neapolitau, ALE Mollica
by name. One picture is a great Roman
scene, composed Of sixty panels, each
weighing fourteen pounds, and the value
of the whole is $4,000. Each panel, after
being painted, has to be burned and
burned, many times over before it takes
on the color desired. A small piece of this
work the artist sold to the roy al family of
Greece for $4,000.
The Italians have here only 10000 square
feet Of surface, but they have made of that
small section a garden which blooms with
art and fills all the surroundings with the
aroma of its high aspiration and won.
derful achievement.
WALTER WELlMAN.