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The Bygone Era Of The Hotel Detective

“Saverio Bongiorno had no permanent home and had been living in various midtown hotels. Bongiorno registered at the Edison Hotel on Sunday, with a small beach bag as his only baggage. He was assigned to room 1135 and nothing more was seen or heard of him…James Gerrity, chief house detective of the Hotel Edison, 224…

STICKY

The Lost Romance of Dance Cards

If you’ve been watching Netflix’s sauciest new period drama, Bridgerton, your curiosity might have been aroused (among other things) by the notable nod to a forgotten footnote of historical dating etiquette – dance cards! In between the sexually-charged scenes of one of Netflix’s most binge-watched shows of late, the bygone ballroom accessory made numerous appearances…

She’s the forgotten Parisian gallerist Who Helped Make Picasso and Matisse

When Jewish art dealer Berthe Weill was forced to close her Parisian gallery and go into hiding during the Occupation of France, she had already helped build the careers of artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Diego Rivera, as well as female including painter Suzanne Valadon, African-American sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 768)

1. Rarely seen photographs of Josephine Baker at the Ziegfeld Follies, 1936 By the middle of the 1930s Joséphine Baker was firmly established as one of France’s brightest stars, and she had high hopes of furthering the great success she’d experienced with the French when she was engaged to be in the starry cast of…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 767)

1. The other Madame X Portraits When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness. The painting’s subject, socialite, Madame Gautreau, refused the painting, and Sargent, depressed and abashed, changed it, painting out the offending…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 766)

1. This incredible artist chess set By Artist Rachel Whiteread. Sold at Christie’s in 2019 for 10,000 GBP. 2. This archive of vintage lighters (For Sale) Shop the archive here. Found via Present & Correct. 3. A box of tortoiseshell sex aids made in the 1930s Made in Japan by the Arita Drug and Rubber…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 765)

1. A mid-19th-century French watch bottle (circa 1850) Represents a luxurious, functional accessory blending horology and jewellery, likely created for the European market or high-end export. It typically features a miniature watch movement encased in azure blue enamel, decorated with seed pearls, and housed in a fitted red shell-shaped leather case. Found on the Decorative…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 764)

1. Name that aesthetic: Domino Paper (for those of us who find as much joy in a book’s “clothing” as its contents) The forerunner of wallpaper, domino paper achieved its golden age in the second half of the 18th century. It took the form a 36X45cm sheet of paper that was printed using engraved wood-blocks…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 763)

1. How Marc Chagall made the Paris Opera House Fresco Ceiling in the summer of 1964 (and should it be kept there?) On August 7, 1964, inside Hangar Y, (formerly the Chalais Meudon site where the world’s first airship hangar was built in the 1870s and is now an excellent art & culture museum in the…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 762)

1. A Parisian apartment frozen in time with floor to ceiling cinema posters Inside the 400m2 home of a French doctor who was crazy about cinema. His walls that tell a lifetime of passion for cinema, every room is an archive, every wall a memory, Discovered and shared by vintage film poster restorer, Arthur Fouasse.…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 761)

1. A Behind the scenes look into the sketchbook of a medieval book illuminator Aren’t these incredible? Selected pages from the Spätgotisches Musterbuch des Stephan Schriber, a manuscript which appears to be some kind of sketchbook, belonging to a fifteenth-century monk working in South-West Germany, where ideas and layouts for illuminated manuscripts were tried out and…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 760)

1. Mistletoe sellers in Paris, 1928 Found here. 2. Collecting Modernist Mailboxes in Paris Photographed by Romain Laprade. 3. Withdrawn from auction, a rare example of the first functioning calculating machine in history was blocked from leaving France Christie’s withdrew rare ‘first calculator’ from auction after French court halts export. La Pascaline, developed by the French…