1. Painter of bugs, Jan van Kessel the Elder
Found on Gods and Foolish Grandeur.
2. Someone’s 94-year-old grandmother has kept a list of every book she ever read since she was 14 years old
An archive of one person’s mind over nearly a century. Find more pages from the list on this amazing Twitter Thread.
3. Owls on the Prowl
Pupils Dressed as Owls, Their Schools Insignia. Manchester Grammar School, UK, 1920s.
Found on Bad Moodboard.
4. This Autochrome portrait of Jean Paris, a chemical engineer, in the laboratory of the Lumière factory in Monplaisir, c. 1907
Found here.
5. All the delicious Typography of the Portuguese Fish Tin Museum
Browse more on the Conservas du Portugal, found via Present & Correct.
6. Louisiana’s Louis XV Tower
In the heart of Louisiana, the antiques dealer Robert E. Smith’s home — a Louis XV fever dream — is surrounded by a moat and fronted by a pair of 300-year-old giant live oak trees. The 66-foot-high, five-story, sanded-concrete tower, which sits on 13 acres, features one large room per floor, connected via a steep wooden spiral staircase that moves you from the ground-floor guest room to the entry-level dining area to the third-floor bedroom, up to the salon on the fourth floor and finally to the rooftop terrace, with its daybed dramatically shrouded in mosquito netting. Although the building is square, its rooms are octagonal, precisely 548 square feet each, with the mechanicals and bathrooms tucked behind the plaster and boiserie walls. Every item — brocade sofas, velvet upholstered chairs, metal hinges, parquet de Versailles floors — is period perfect; Smith will brook no interruption of his rococo illusion.
Find the full New York Times Style Magazine article here.
Discover Robert E. Smith‘s world on Instagram here.
7. Bolivia’s Palacio de Sal Hotel (constructed entirely of salt)
Located at the edge of the world’s largest salt flat (Salar de Uyuni), is constructed entirely of salt. The floor, walls, ceiling, beds, tables, chairs, and sculptures are all made of salt. There is a rule prohibiting guests from licking the walls.
Visit the hotel’s website here.
8. Meet Harriet Eckerson from Encampment, Wyoming, 1929
Photo by Lora Webb Nichols. Found on Vintage America Uncovered.
9. The Courtesan’s Smile
Smiling Girl / Courtesan Holding an Obscene Image, by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1625. The model holds an image of a naked woman, perhaps the model herself, covering her face and captioned in Dutch “Wie kent mijn naers van Afteren” (Who can recognize my backside from behind?). The small image likely advertises her services, as this was a common practice in the sex industry of the time.
Found on Gods & Foolish Grandeur.
10. Early Androids and Artificial Speech
Centuries before audio deepfakes and text-to-speech software, inventors in the eighteenth century constructed androids with swelling lungs, flexible lips, and moving tongues to simulate human speech. Jessica Riskin explores the history of such talking heads, from their origins in musical automata to inventors’ quixotic attempts to make machines pronounce words, converse, and declare their love.
Read the article on Public Domain Review.
11. Olden day equivalent of having multiple tabs open – easy access to 7 open books at once
Found on Mildly Interesting.
12. The U.S. Army’s 1st & only ever bicycle division, the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps in 1897
In June of 1897, the all-black company of the 25th Mobile Infantry, under command of a white lieutenant and accompanied by a medic and a journalist, embarked on a journey across America’s heartland — from Fort Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri — to “test most thoroughly the bicycle as a means of transportation for troops.”
The division disbanded the same year. Found on Gear Junkie.
13. All of these interviews of Artists in their Lofts are worth a watch
The filmmaker’s book is out now.
