It’s one of those things everyone’s heard of, but few truly understand. It sits quietly in the corner of the bathroom (or as an attachment to the toilet itself), radiating mystery and a slight sense of intimidation. Ask someone about it, and you’ll usually get a shrug or a vague … | Continue reading
1. Art Excavation by Shan Hur I love the make-believe element of Shan Hur’s installations, offering the viewer an appreciation for the art itself, but also for the adventurous ways in which objets d’art can often be discovered. 2. This Roman glass work from 300 AD, survived intac … | Continue reading
1. A last look at an almost-forgotten Parisian apartment before it became a Museum Café at the Musée Bourdelle in Paris Antoine Bourdelle’s daughter Rhodia proved herself a dedicated guardian to her sculptor father’s artistic heritage, as the apartment she made of his studio abov … | Continue reading
1. Bezoar stones: undigested matter found in the gastrointestinal tract of deer, goats, porcupines and other animals, once prized as magical cure-all stones, worn by royalty Arabian doctors had been using bezoars since the 8th century, and brought them into western medicine in th … | Continue reading
1. An old French Bank for Sale in the town of Nevers (two hours from Paris) An intriguing listing (asking price 1 544 000 €). Found on Patrice Besse. 2. | Continue reading
So I found this peculiar collection on Flickr by a guy in California called Frank Kelsey. He’s been collecting for 30+ years – he’s also got impressive collections of vintage ashtrays, matchbook covers and baseball cards – but it’s his sugar cube wrappers that had me really enamo … | Continue reading
Cauldrons ready? 1. Vintage ephemera from the Talking Board Historical Society Time to get your boards out. More imagery here. | Continue reading
I was doing the rounds at my go-to brocante / Aladdin’s cave and caught a glint of some unique pink glassware on a shelf, tucked away behind some kitschy old china. It wasn’t your average bubblegum pink, this was Charles X’s gorge de pigeon, “pigeon’s throat” pink; named as such … | Continue reading
There’s something in the window of my boutique on Paris’ Left Bank that has been stopping wanderers in their tracks. It’s that mesmerising shade of deep, Prussian blue, the result of a 19th-century photographic process known as cyanotype, once favoured by Victorian botanists and … | Continue reading
1. Currently lusting after these 3D animal portraits: Immediately must have these at the Cabinet. Stay tuned. | Continue reading
In the 1960s, Barbara Chase-Riboud chose Paris as her home and sanctuary away from her upbringing Jim Crow America, and yet frustratingly, for too long, her genius remained quietly overshadowed by the tumultuous tides of history. The Philadelphia-born artist and writer may not be … | Continue reading
Forget your standard 19th-century dinner parties, where everyone sat around sipping sherry and discussing the weather. If you were lucky enough to snag an invite to Charles Babbage’s Saturday night soirées, you were in for a wild ride through the brainiest and most bizarre conver … | Continue reading
Whilst looking recently at an old nautical map of the North Shore coastline of Massachusetts, one tiny island caught our eye because of its mysterious sounding name: Great Misery Island! Further inspection of the map showed that the island had no towns, roads or any other topogra … | Continue reading
1. Currently lusting after these 3D animal portraits: Immediately must have these at the Cabinet. Stay tuned. | Continue reading
1. Meet one of the world’s most prolific chair collectors: How Noritsugu Oda found himself sitting on 1,400 chairs. Over 50 years, the Japanese illustrator has accumulated a world-class archive. | Continue reading
1. An antique railway car miniature made by a retired French postman A wooden-framed railway car is finished with tinted straw in decorative manner to create wall murals, carpets, inlay furnishings, and walls in the interior, and slatted boards and window frames on the exterior. … | Continue reading
1. Photographing the Williamsburg Bridge Riders A few of my favourite shots from the Instagram account of Adam DiCarlo found via Kottke. 2. How Kodak invented the “snapshot” 3. | Continue reading
1. Just a Female Street fight duel with sand-filled socks Published in “Le Petit Journal” November 1st 1902: There are Apaches of both sexes as seen recently in the rue du Général-Morin. Louise Henin, a beautiful girl of twenty, became mortally angered by Andrée Merle, twenty-thr … | Continue reading
Every Thursday, Spitalfields antique market in London spans a historic covered marketplace that transforms itself into a maze of stalls bearing jewellery, clothing, housewares, and more. At the jewellery stalls, a shrewd buyer can find gold, silver, gemstones, and more. And, if t … | Continue reading
Even Hitler couldn’t rob Paris of its style. In 1945, the end of the war was in sight, the French capital had already been liberated of the Nazi occupation and it was time for Paris to relaunch its fashion industry. There was just one problem– the industry couldn’t afford enough … | Continue reading
1. This delightful collector of tiny things Jane Housham is a collector, sorter, cutter-outer, writer, artist. 2. This charming 1950s menu When French restaurateur Andre Frelier and his wife Yvonne opened L’Omelette bistro in 1932, it quickly became a favorite spot for Stanford U … | Continue reading
Did you know that a glass sponge could live as long as 15,000 years? They could probably live up to 40,000 years if changing sea levels weren’t a factor, and are thought by many to have the longest life span of any animal on Earth, in fact, sponges are probably the closest to wha … | Continue reading
1. The Making of Alex Chinneck’s new looping barge He’s the same guy who made the famous sliding houses & more. More of the “how it was made” on his Instagram. Found via Present & Correct. | Continue reading
It appears we’ve come full circle. Picture a time before smartphones, Youtube, Tik Tok, streaming services, or even the modern movie theater as we know it — a time when a few moments of visual entertainment involved peeking into a mysterious, boxy machine and cranking a handle. B … | Continue reading
We do love a good plunge into worlds apart – filled with secret society conspiracies and folks living off-grid or on the fringes of society. The latest curious collective to pique my interest is perhaps the quirkiest of masonic orders, called “The Shriners”, formally known as the … | Continue reading
1. This excellent Twitter (X) thread about a labyrinthine magical bookstore in Syracuse, NY And then a hero of the labyrinthine magical bookstores of the world put all the bookstores that people listed in the replies on a map! Link to the first tweet in the thread. 2. | Continue reading
If it took you this long to identify one of the most epic genres of art history, welcome to the club. We must have skipped class that day. The aesthetic: a lost civilization – its crumbling and vaguely familiar architectural forms dramatically lit by a sunset backdrop, and in the … | Continue reading
On the serene waters of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, nestled among the Borromean Islands, lies Isola Bella, a place where history, art, and nature converge. While the island is renowned for its opulent Baroque palace and terraced gardens – including six incredible shell-encru … | Continue reading
1. A new hotel in Rome designed by Luca Guadagnino, director of Call Me By Your Name The Palazzo Talìa is 26 rooms and the Challengers director designed its public spaces and one of its suites. Book it here. Found via Will O’Connor on X. | Continue reading
1. The marbelised “Literatur” passageway in the Museumsquartier in Vienna Free to wander through, the mural (painted by Austrian artist Johanna Kandl) is inspired by the marbled endpapers used in Baroque book production. The vending machine dispenses literature written by young A … | Continue reading
The original Olympic games got cancelled for 1500 years because … well … everyone was naked. The Ancient Greek Olympic Games, held from 776 BC to 393 AD, so that’s nearly 10 times longer than the modern Olympics have been running (since 1896), were celebrated almost entirely in t … | Continue reading
1. The oldest functioning planetarium in the world Hidden behind a pocket-sized door in a doll’s house-like building in the sleepy Dutch town of Franeker is a room so unique that even a King was star-struck. Explore the extraordinary world created by wool weaver turned astronomer … | Continue reading
1. For sale: the only private island in the San Francisco Bay Red Rock Island was a site for manganese mining, and abandoned mining tunnels still exist, along with the coast guard’s old fog bell. Otherwise, the private island is undeveloped. | Continue reading
The Années Folles in Paris — a time for jazz, literature of the Lost Generation, and a little-known fetish fashion boom. Spearheaded by a husband and wife team largely forgotten by history, Nativa Richard and her husband L. Richard, were the dynamic duo behind a groundbreaking br … | Continue reading
1. Fellini’s Forgotten Masterpiece Fellini Satyricon, or simply Satyricon, is a 1969 Italian film written and directed by Federico Fellini and loosely based on Petronius’s work Satyricon, written during the reign of Emperor Nero and set in Imperial Rome. Fellini Satyricon was ent … | Continue reading
Aloïse Corbaz lived a life outside the margins. Institutionalised, alone, and without any training, her deeply individual artworks were both a product of and a comment on her struggles with mental illness. Within the walls of a Swiss asylum in early 20th century, Corbaz was extre … | Continue reading
As the countdown for the Paris Summer Olympics has begun and the excitement for the international extravaganza of athletic prowess mounts, few will now remember a past games that had a rather more frugal approach to the sporting proceedings. Compared to the multi-millions spent o … | Continue reading
1. The Empty Louvre Paul Almásy, a Hungarian photojournalist who immigrated to France in 1934. Almásy’s photograph was taken at the Louvre Museum in Paris, articulating the theme of artworks needing to be remembered by documenting an actual historical event. In 1938 with the thre … | Continue reading
In the world-renowned vineyards of Champagne, known for producing some of the finest sparkling wines, an unexpected treasure trove lies hidden beneath the fertile soil. This region, famous for its bubbly delights, harbors a fascinating secret dating back to an era when it was not … | Continue reading
1. I did a breakfast podcast with the Earful Tower And I’m now known, according to the brilliant Oliver Gee, as the woman selling the Seine River. You can listen to the episode of our chat directly in the article. 2. | Continue reading
His name is synonymous with the art of mime, a performer whose silent expressions spoke volumes. But beyond his pale-faced persona and invisible walls lies a story of remarkable bravery and heroism. During World War II, Marceau used his unique talents to save children from the ho … | Continue reading
Today, our time machine is going for a pit-stop on a sunny, Victorian Era beach in Atlantic City, where the ponies are aplenty, and the bathing costumes make the women look like layer cakes. Sure, contemporary eyes may see a bunch of prudes, but for folks in the 1800s, showing of … | Continue reading
What happens when a samurai puts down his sword, and picks up a paintbrush? In 1868, feudal Japan was steamrolled by a new decade known as the Meiji Restoration. Western influences flooded every crevice of the country’s social fabric, but arguably the most fascinating battle betw … | Continue reading
1. The Bygone Baguette Mailboxes of French Polynesia Read the article on Atlas Obscura, found on Present & Correct. 2. State Guest Mansions, 260 abandoned villas in Shenyang, China The Story Behind the Many Ghost Towns of Abandoned Mansions Across China found on Architectural Dig … | Continue reading
We love a fashion moment wrapped in a mystery, which is precisely what happened when fate, or chance, or whatever, first brought us to our dream handbag. There, in the sea musty bins at the Brooklyn Flea, it glimmered: a purse made up of cream coloured coils…dare we say, telephon … | Continue reading
Between 1900 and 1930, a poor and destitute seed pedlar took more than five thousand photographs of daily life in an isolated valley of the Italian-speaking Swiss territory to the south of the Alps. Roberto Donetta can now be considered one of Swiss photography’s great outsider a … | Continue reading
1. Inside Andy Warhols Factory Andy Warhols Factory photographed by Timothy Hursley. An extraordinary set of photographs that capture the office elements to the factory as well as the terrific excitement at the sight of Keith Haring or Bianca Jagger at the end. I also think we sh … | Continue reading
“The Seine is a great place to have a crisis, since it clearly embodies the strength and the uncertainty, the beauty and the challenge of Paris itself.” – James Baldwin The Seine river flows through the heart of the northern region of France, including Paris, bringing life, busin … | Continue reading