Interior Design, Furniture and accessories

To the layman, furniture is the most important aspect of interior design. It is a significant component of design to the professional as well, since it is the most personal and intimate product relating man to a building. It is also personal because it can be moved from one home to the next and handed on from generation to generation, and often furniture takes on important

Latin-american Literature, Vanguard literature

When the Modernist leaders Dar�o and Lugones turned to frequent use of more traditional forms and especially to themes dealing with the troubled external world, their followers and many younger poets continued to explore the complex versification and language and new thematic sources with which Modernism had enriched Hispanic poetry. Prominent among them

Fishhook Cactus

Mammillaria, native from southwestern North America to the Caribbean, Colombia, and Venezuela, is a large and complex genus of about 150 species. Its species are

Wu Daoxuan

He is recorded as having painted a wide variety of subjects, perhaps painting large wall compositions of an essentially Buddhist character more than anything else. He is especially noted for his imagination

Mabley, Moms

Byname of �Jackie Mabley�, original name �Loretta Mary Aiken� American comedian who was one of the most successful black vaudeville performers. She modeled her stage persona largely on her grandmother, who had been a slave. Wise, clever, and often ribald, Mabley dressed in frumpy clothes and used her deep voice and elastic face (and, in later years, her toothlessness) to great

Ashikaga

City, Tochigi ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It is located on the Watarase River. Ashikaga Takauji, who established the Ashikaga shogunate in the 14th century, was born there. Ashikaga was a post town on the Nikko Highway during the Tokugawa era (1603 - 1867). It was a dyeing and weaving centre for several centuries, and after the national railway was opened in 1867 it flourished as a textile

Diemen, Anthony Van

After an unsuccessful business career in Amsterdam, van Diemen joined the Dutch East India Company, serving in Batavia from 1618 and becoming governor general in 1636. To strengthen the company's

Madhya Pradesh

In November 2000 the new state of Chhattisgarh was formed from Madhya Pradesh's eastern provinces. Encompassing 56,510 square miles (146,361 square

Table Talk

Informal conversation at or as if at a dining table; especially, the social talk of a celebrity recorded for publication. Collections of such conversations exist from as early as the 3rd century AD, and the term has been in use in English since about the 16th century. The practice of recording conversations and sayings of the famous became especially popular in the 17th century.

Monroe, Elizabeth

After leaving Washington, the Monroes retired to their estate in Oak Hill, Virginia, where Elizabeth died in 1830. She and James, who survived her by less than one year, were buried beside each other in Richmond, Virginia.

Key, V(aldimer) O(rlando), Jr.

Educated at the University of Texas (B.A., 1929; M.A., 1930) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1934), Key joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles. In

Minotaur

Greek �Minotauros� (�Minos' Bull�), in Greek mythology, a fabulous monster of Crete that had the body of a man and the head of a bull. It was the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos (q.v.), and a snow-white bull sent to Minos by the god Poseidon for sacrifice. Minos, instead of sacrificing it, kept it alive; Poseidon as a punishment made Pasiphae fall in love with it. Her child by the bull was shut up in the

Mashonaland

Mashonaland consists largely of the northeastern part of Zimbabwe's Middle Veld, a wide plateau lying at an

Chorion

In vertebrates, the chorion is covered with ectoderm lined with mesoderm (both are germ layers) and is separated from other embryonic membranes by an extraembryonic body cavity,

Saint Kitts And Nevis

Officially �Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis,� also called �Saint Christopher and Nevis,� state composed of two islands of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea. Their combined area is 104 square miles (269 square kilometres). The capital is Basseterre on the island of Saint Kitts.

Cord Moss

Any of the plants of the genus Funaria (order Bryales), distinguished by the spirally twisted seta (stalk) of the capsule (spore case). More than 100 species of Funaria are found in many habitats throughout the world, especially on limestone or recently burned areas. About nine species are present in North America; the most common is F. hygrometrica, which

Pachymeres, George

Upon the fall in 1262 of the Latin Eastern Empire and the return of the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, Pachymeres went to Constantinople and was ordained to the

Orl�ans, Louis-philippe-robert, Duc D' (duke Of)

The eldest son of Louis-Philippe-Albert, comte de Paris, and great-grandson of King Louis-Philippe, Orl�ans was banished from France in 1886 as a threat to the republican regime. Returning in 1890, he was arrested and given a prison sentence but was released after a few months

Minahasan

People inhabiting the northernmost extension of the island of Celebes, Indonesia, in and around the port town of Manado. Of Proto-Malay stock, the Minahasan, formerly headed by chiefs, are now organized patrilineally under headmen, and land is owned communally by each village. Extended families are bound to undivided estates that are apportioned according to the

Biblical Literature, Early stages

The earliest Christian exegesis of the Old Testament is found in the New Testament, not in the written texts only but in the oral tradition lying behind them. Some lines of exegesis are present in so many separate strands of primitive Christian teaching that they are most reasonably assigned to Jesus, who began his Galilaean ministry with the announcement that

Qina

Also spelled �Qena, � town and capital of Qina muhafazah (governorate), Upper Egypt, on a canal 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the Nile River at its great bend, opposite Dandarah. The town was called Caene (New Town) by the ancient Greeks to distinguish it from Coptos (now Qift), 14 miles south, whose trade with Arabia, India, and China it eventually acquired. The shift resulted from the use of a more northerly route across

Steady-state Theory

In cosmology, a view that the universe is always expanding but maintaining a constant average density, matter being continuously created to form new stars and galaxies at the same rate that old ones become unobservable as a consequence of their increasing distance and velocity of recession. A steady-state universe has no beginning or end in time; and from any point

Wade, Sir Thomas Francis

The elder son of an English army officer, Wade graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge (1837), and entered the army. Sent to China in 1842, he began an earnest study of Chinese and eventually became an official interpreter,

Abe Masahiro

Born into an influential noble family, Abe was only 25 years old when he was appointed head of the roju (senior councillors), the highest administrative office under the shogun,

France, History Of, Charles X, 1824 - 30

Charles X, the younger brother of Louis XVIII, had spent the Revolutionary years in exile and had returned embittered rather than chastened by the experience. What France needed, in his view, was a return to the unsullied principle of divine right, buttressed by the restored authority of the established church. The new king and his Cabinet - still headed by Vill�le - promptly

East African Rift System

The system consists of two branches. The main branch, the Eastern Rift Valley (often called the Great Rift Valley, or Rift Valley), extends along the entire length

Roman Catholicism, History Of, The rise of heresy

Before the middle of the 12th century heresy on a large scale was unknown in the West. The early dissenters were often radical reformers such as the Italian canon Arnold of Brescia (d. 1155), an outspoken critic of clerical wealth and corruption. Then there appeared in northern Italy and southern France the sect, Eastern and Manichaean in origin, later known as the Cathari (the

Wu-han

Pinyin �Wuhan� fifth largest city of the People's Republic of China, in Hupeh Province, located at the confluence of the Han and Yangtze rivers. It is a conurbation of three adjacent cities - Han-k'ou (Hankow), Han-yang, and Wu-ch'ang; the last is the capital of Hupeh Province. Han-k'ou lies on the north bank of the Yangtze at the mouth of the Han. Immediately across the Han from it is the older city