Loretta reports:These photos are from my visit last year to the Victoria & Albert Museum .According to the note accompanying this display of a fashionable family’s table setting for dessert, “The...
Isabella/Susan reporting:Weve seen what a stylish British mantua-makers apprentice might wear in the shop in the 1770s, what a female blacksmith or other laboring woman might wear at her work, and, w...
Loretta reports:In observance of Memorial Day, we continue Thursdays photo series on the Florence American Cemetery.
It may be a holiday weekend, but were still serving up a fresh serving of our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, photographs, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.•...
After some inexplicable glitch at YouTube last night, were finally able to post this wonderful Friday Video to continue our observation of Memorial Day. The bugle call known as Taps is 150 years old ...
Todays video continues our observation of Memorial Day with a brief history of sounding taps. Is there any other piece of music thats as instantly recognizable, yet always evocative and filled with e...
Loretta reports:Memorial Day will be observed in the U.S. on Monday, and the parties & sales will run through the weekend. But many of us will take a moment to reflect on what this day mean...
Susan reports:Sometimes "reading" an 18th c print is easy, and the humor is obvious. Theres not much subtlety to a cartoon of women tripping so their skirts fly up, or twittering dandies, eit...
Loretta reports:~~~290. Coffee. The infusion or decoction of the roasted seeds of the coffee-berry, when not too strong, is a wholesome, exhilarating, and strengthening beverage; and when mixed with ...
Isabella/Susan reporting:For nearly 200 years, the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall offered Londoners every kind of entertainment, from sublime orchestral music to the spectacle of a horse and rider lift...
Served up fresh for your weekend delight: our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, photographs, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse. For even more links (and every d...
Loretta reports:Continuing my celebration of early cinema, todays short feature is a trailer for the Mae West film, Im No Angel. She was one remarkable woman, as this rare BBC Interview makes c...
Isabella/Susan reporting:As we reported here last week, we Nerdy History Girls are now on Pinterest. I suspected it would be fun, and to my image-magpie-brain, it is. But Ive been surprised by how th...
Isabella/Susan reporting:Earlier this year, I wrote a post about Mavisbank, above, a tragically neglected country house in Midlothia, Scotland. Designed in 1772 by Robert Adam, Mavisbank was not only...
Loretta reports:Giovanni Belzoni was one of the inspirations for the hero of my Egypt-set story, Mr. Impossible. Transporting the colossal head was only one of Belzonis many amazing adventures....
Isabella/Susan* reporting:When I visited Winterthur Museum last week, I not only wandered through the peony gardens, but also saw the museums newest special exhibition, Uncorked! Wine, Objects, &...
Loretta reports:Then as today, magazines (both men’s & women’s) featured celebrity gossip. Rather than rock and movie stars, the subjects were members of Fashionable Society. Then as now, as well...
As youve probably guessed, we like pictures almost as much as we like words, which made our leap to Pinterest almost inevitable. Weve been busily posting images of even more interesting historical go...
Served up fresh for your weekend delight: our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, photographs, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.• Fancy Edwardian folk in fancy d...
Isabella/Susan reporting:Just to prove that I do leave the keyboard behind once in a while: an absolutely beautiful morning at Winterthur Museum, Garden, & Library yesterday. Summer cant be far a...
Isabella/Susan reporting:Todays video isnt particularly historical, but it is a delightful way to start the day, and the weekend, too. One morning last month, members of the Copenhagen Philharmonic s...
Loretta reports:~~~MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL, for the reception of the sick and the lame, and for lying-in married women, is situated in Mary-bone-fields, near Oxford-road, now called Charles - street. ...
Isabella/Susan* reporting:When I see an 18th c doorway in Massachusetts, I expect to see a simple pediment or porch. What I dont expect are the skulls of oxen. Bovine skulls are found in paintings by...
Loretta reports:Didst ever see a Gondola? For fear You should not, I’ll describe it to you exactly: ‘Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here, Carved at the prow, ...
Isabella/Susan* reports:When the Earl of Marlton, later 1st Marquess of Rockingham, expanded his country seat of Wentworth Woodhouse with an eye to entertaining on a grand scale, he invested consider...
Served up fresh for your weekend delight: our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, photographs, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.• Shawl dresses & dresses mad...
Loretta reports:Early animated films can be surprisingly trippy. This one features two of my 20th C favorites: Betty Boop & Cab Calloway. He’s the man dancing at the beginning. Not As...
Isabella/Susan* reporting:Lately a valuable historical commodity has been much in the news. Its a commodity discovered in Mexico by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th c, desired by 17th c French kings...
English Walking DressLoretta reports:In his/her General Observations on Fashion and Dress, the fashion writer of La Belle Assemblée waxes rhapsodic about the month of May.~~~The fashions of the delig...
Isabella/Susan* reporting:Display was an important part of elegant Georgian dining. Not only did the food have to be properly composed and the conversation scintillating, but every spoon and serving ...
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