Theatres are inherently haunted places. By night, actors tread the boards, conjuring the spirits of those who lived and those who never were. We can hardly expect all those shades to simply evaporate into the ether after the final curtain. Instead they seep into dark and secluded … | Continue reading
1. Crow Native Americans watching the rodeo at Crow fair in Montana, 1941 Colorisation by Sanna Dullaway. 2. The first kiss captured on camera was between two women in 1887 (contrary to Edison’s “The Kiss” film, widely accredited to being the first, 9 years later) “The First Nake … | Continue reading
Whilst exploring the abandoned Grossinger’s holiday resort in New York’s Catskill mountains one last time before it was torn down, something caught our eye in the crumbling ruins of what had once been the ice skate house. Propped up against the wall was a large wooden sign that h … | Continue reading
Cairo, 1938. Around 140,000 British troops occupied the city, and World War II was ready to burst. Thirty-seven artists and writers gathered to fight against a rising Fascist ideology, British colonial rule, and the local conservative art scene. The first inklings of Surrealism a … | Continue reading
‘A bandstand is, merely an empty shell unless music is played upon it,’ so laments Pavilions for Music, a website dedicated to the humble bandstand. Indeed, these empty shells with their elaborate ironwork and faded glamour, rushed past by commuters, utilised as climbing frames b … | Continue reading
Despite inflation and skyrocketing energy prices, The City of Lights isn’t going dark during the holidays, but instead is relying on LED lights and shorter hours (ie turning off all of the lights before midnight) to maintain the usual festive mood throughout the city. Let’s start … | Continue reading
1. Living Paintings By Thierry Mandon 2. Joan Didion’s belongings from her NY apartment are up for auction See the catalogue here. 3. The New Yorker’s List of Best Books of 2022 so far If this list doesn’t get you back into reading, I don’t know what will. 4. This Instagram accou … | Continue reading
When most people think of secrecy in Washington, DC, they probably think of the FBI, the CIA or the Pentagon. But just south of Embassy Row, nestled behind the façades of five row houses, there stands an icon of kitsch, African American history, and rock and roll: the Mansion on … | Continue reading
We need to talk about Beatrice Wood. The last surviving member of the American Dada movement, the ceramicist, the artist, the writer, the actress, the lover, and let’s not leave out, the inspiration behind the headstrong character of “Rose” in the movie Titanic. Beatrice was born … | Continue reading
1. A Parisian Apartment For Sale in the Iconic Art Nouveau Hector Guimard Building The 4th floor apartment is asking 840,000 euros, found on Architecture de Collection. 2. These Incredible Miniatures by Aida Pravia Found on Etsy. 3. Virtual Reality from the Year 1830 4. Cool Stuf … | Continue reading
Imagine literally stumbling across a colorful tile in the road with some version of the bizarre inscription “Toynbee idea in movie 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter.” This seemingly incomprehensible mambo-jumbo has flummoxed lovers of urban legends for decades, since they fir … | Continue reading
Thought punk was an invention of the 70s? Think again. A diminutive ravenette bombshell with animated eye-brows, brash blue eyeshadow, chalk-white skin and red lips was eons ahead of the curve and had laid the foundations of the punk movement w-a-y back in the 1920s already. Danc … | Continue reading
You’ve probably never heard of Walter Schnackenberg, a draughtsman, and illustrator of the early 20th century who could conjure up nightmarish images as easily as he could convey the decadent and jovial bourgeois Berlin of pre-war Europe. From his flowing effervescent studies of … | Continue reading
The Nevada desert is arguably home to some of the strangest attractions in North America. From Clown Motels and Ghost Towns to haunted dolls and Area 51 there is no shortage of places to satisfy your taste for weird America, but none like Coffinwood, a custom coffin factory, wedd … | Continue reading
Daily life could be grim in early modern London. Plague and other diseases seemed to lurk in the shadows. Education was out of reach for most. And the contents–or lack thereof–of your dinner table relied almost entirely on forces of nature beyond your control and which were runni … | Continue reading
The ruins of Harper, Liberia are as beautiful as they are complicated… In 1833, a group of 2,769 formerly enslaved and and freeborn African Americans settled in the town of Harper on the west coast of Africa. They were part of a new colony called Maryland-in-Africa that sought to … | Continue reading
1. A Secret Underground Staircase outside the Louvre Revealed Spotted by a tourist, this is a hidden tunnel network for emergency. Much of the museum and its stores are underground and they are all connected to a big tunnel that you need to follow to exit safely the facility in c … | Continue reading
This is more of an appreciation post for the Twitter account “Zillow Gone Wild” than anything else. There is arguably nothing I enjoy more than perusing the insane properties while eating my lunch, from gaudy McMansions to mind-boggling “wait … you can buy that thing?” listings. … | Continue reading
1. Queen Maud the sportswoman When then Princess Maud of Wales married in 1896, her trousseau (I.E. her new wardrobe) was discussed in detail in the press. Some magazines was surprised by the amount of “sportswear” and the lack of grand robes, especially considering her mother Al … | Continue reading
The largest collection of Moorish Revival architecture in America and the Western Hemisphere is where you’d least (or maybe most) expect it: Florida. A development project before it’s time, from the vision of 1920s aviation and motorcycling pioneer who was inspired by One Thousan … | Continue reading
One of the twentieth century’s essential artists, Georgia O’Keeffe needs little introduction. Her name immediately evokes large oil paintings depicting flowers or desert landscapes. O’Keeffe is also known for her paintings of New York City skyscrapers, her marriage to the photogr … | Continue reading
Who was Claude Cahun? As ambiguous as an empty page, a radical and an indefinable surrealist who traversed social construct; artist, performer, photographer, sculptor, writer, WWII resistance fighter, female, male, other; Claude Cahun was all of these things, or none of these thi … | Continue reading
We are exploring New York City with an old hand drawn map that bears the mysterious legend, ‘Where Silence Reigns.’ Roughly sketched out over a hundred and twenty years ago, it shows just four streets. Like a pirate’s map of old, it has an ‘X’ marked on it, but this map marks the … | Continue reading
1. Teenagers in the Early 19th Century, from a Girl’s Sketchbook In 1815-1818 teenager Christiane Charlotte «Lotte» Elster (1800-1893) depicted various scenes from everyday life. Details like attires, hairstyles, activities and even names has been faithfully added to the pages of … | Continue reading
Just how folles were the “Années Folles”? In the digital archives of the French National Library, I stumbled upon a few clues, in vibrant colour. “Paris Plaisirs” is a long-forgotten monthly revue that appears to have been published sometime between 1922-1938 (possibly earlier) f … | Continue reading
The atomic age of Americana was marked by post war prosperity, white picket fence idealism, and pinup models. Lots and lots of pinup models. Rosy cheeked redheads and buxom blondes graced magazines, calendars, billboards, and even book covers. These images were as ubiquitous as t … | Continue reading
Americans in Paris. Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Jim Morrison, James Baldwin, Nina Simone – these are the names and faces that typically come to mind when we think of those who left their mark on the French capital. But a bison-chasing cowboy doesn’t exactly fit the profile of the … | Continue reading
1. These Incredible 1920s Illustrations for Carmen Hans Henning Otto Harry Baron von Voigt, best known by his nickname Alastair, was a German artist, composer, dancer, mime, poet, singer and translator. “Carmen is a short story by Prosper Mérimée written in 1845 and published in … | Continue reading
It could well be the heavily kohled black eyes staring straight at you from under that black balaclava and the slinky catsuit that jog the memory. Mind you, we’re talking well over a century ago here, and eons before the Kardashians or Catwoman began flexing their feline curves i … | Continue reading
Before the Spice Girs, before Destiny’s Child and TLC, even before the Supremes, there was a litany of female singing groups – often found in threes, often known for their harmonic prowess, and often found on the great vaudeville stages of the time. They laid the foundation for t … | Continue reading
If a wine’s vintage is decided by the year the grapes were harvested, wouldn’t it be fitting for France to celebrate the New Year at harvest time? At the turn of the 19th century, that’s just what France did. With the rise to the First Republic in the wake of the French Revolutio … | Continue reading
One of things that surprises most people about Sleepy Hollow, is finding out that it is a real place. For a name so shrouded in folklore and tales of headless horsemen told around firesides, it may seem like the creation of a gothic writer’s imagination, but Sleepy Hollow is in f … | Continue reading
1. Airbnb Recreated the “Hocus Pocus” cottage for Halloween Two guests can book an exclusive stay on 20 October for just $31* per night. That also gets them a tour of Salem’s ‘most haunted’ historic properties, a special screening of the movie and ‘try their hand at enchantments’ … | Continue reading
Anyone fortunate enough to visit Sicily, could not fail to notice the beguiling ceramic Moor heads, brimming with foliage, adorning gardens and balconies all over the island. Sicily is famous for its ceramics, designed in classical maiolica, but what may be lesser known, is that … | Continue reading
When we think of the fashion industry’s most influential movers & shakers and icon-makers of the last 50 years, familiar names like Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, Grace Coddington or Patricia Field (Sex & the City) come to mind. But there’s another name that got left down the back … | Continue reading
One of the most exciting technological advances of recent decades is arguably the 3D printer, allowing creators to turn their wildest inventions into real-life products. But 3D printers are far from the first foray into producing realistic, 3-dimensional replicas. Photo-sculpture … | Continue reading
1. This Incredible Pumpkin Caramel Pie to kick off fall Recipe found on the Kitchen McCabe. 2. Painting of the Day Eclips of the Sun in Venice in July 8, 1842 by Ippolito Caffi. Zoom in on Wikimedia. 3. One of the churches at Geghard Monastery in Goght, Armenia (4th Century) Foun … | Continue reading
Lost in the Atlantic Ocean, nine islands thrust out of the depth of the sea in a fiery birth created by seismic activity. The archipelago of the Azores, said by some to have even been the fragments left behind from the lost continent of Atlantis – the sunken land said by Plato to … | Continue reading
The many style subcultures of post-war and modern Japan are rooted in rejection; a succession of generations refusing to traditional parental values. Each one has formed its own unique uniform of rebellion, but some have taken it to further extremes than others, riding dangerousl … | Continue reading
Walking through Paris, as a tourist or a local, it’s hard to miss the sense of harmony that the city exudes. The standardized buildings, the parks, the long angular streets that seem to always lead to a landmark. Everything feels intentional, organized, and connected. This isn’t … | Continue reading
1. #TheQueuefortheQueen 2. The British royal family owns a not-so-nerdy stamp collection worth £100 million (The Royal Philatelic Collection also doubles as the family photo album). Queen Victoria’s son Prince Alfred started it all off with a pane of 6d stamps acquired in 1856, a … | Continue reading
Expanding the concept of gender is a big conversation in western culture today. It can be viewed as a revolutionary act of freedom, or, on the other end of the spectrum, something to be feared and discredited. But the world is wide and history has its surprises – in the 1920s, po … | Continue reading
“I am a witch, oh that’s true”, confirmed Gertrude Abercrombie to a Chicago radio host in 1977, the year she died. In truth, the strangest thing about Gertrude Abercrombie is that she isn’t a household name among the Surrealist greats of the 20th century. Sure, she wore pointy ha … | Continue reading
The French have arguably mastered the art of slow living in the name of joie de vivre, and perhaps nowhere else has this been best demonstrated than on the cobblestone streets of Montmartre, which for many years, played host to the world’s slowest race… The story goes that one Ne … | Continue reading
When we think of Vogue we visualise a vibrant, striking, photographic image adorning the front cover of the seminal publication, but the first pictorial cover would not appear until 1932. Before the likes of Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Annie Lebovitz and Steven Meisel, it was … | Continue reading
1. This Fabulous Account of Colorised Historical Images All found on History Colored. 2. An Iridescent Pileus Cloud over China NASA’s astronomy photo of the day, found via Present & Correct. 3. This Incredible Private Canadian Island Home For Sale Table Rock Islands , Georgian Ba … | Continue reading
In the decades since she jumped from a lower Manhattan high rise window at the age of 22, Francesca Woodman’s work has been rediscovered, revered and taught as gospel to photography students and has taken on a mythical cult status. Critics are forever tempted to use the circumsta … | Continue reading
Is it just us, or has Joan Didion become the go-to heroine for millennial and even Gen Z “cool girls”? Move over Jane Birkin – by declaring allegiance to the late American writer on social media, Didion brings instant credibility and style to one’s online persona – even if one ha … | Continue reading