1. The Portable Pocket “iPad” of Typewriters
The smallest typewriters ever made, first produced in 1907.
Found here.
2. Royal Gorge Route in 1951 (still running)
Denver and Rio Grande Western locomotive #5481 pulls train #1 through the Royal Gorge beside the Arkansas River in Fremont County, Colorado. Shows Hanging Bridge and the sheer walls of the canon spanned by the Royal Gorge suspension bridge.
The service (and same train) still runs daily.
3. Scenes in a Bottle
Forget ships in a bottle…
The “Picasso”, if you will, of bottle folk art, was a guy named Carl Worner. According to FolkArtinBottles.com:
…while his name is well-known and his bottles highly recognizable to collectors, we really know very little about the man… Carl Worner was a prolific builder with a very distinctive style. He built four main categories of bottles: crucifixion scenes, clocks, bar or saloon scenes, and non-saloon dioramas. Among Worner’s non-saloon dioramas were bottles of bakeries , meat markets, a cigar factory, shoe repair shops, a tailor shop, an office, a funeral home (complete with a body in the casket), a marine diorama (with a woman waving to man sailing away in a small boat), a Catholic church altar scene, private homes (including one with the man in lederhosen), and a very different outdoor woodsman scene.
In case you’re wondering how this works, check this out.
4. Girard Perregaux Masonic Watch
Good luck trying to find this niche watch anywhere on the market, but you can find something pretty similar here on Etsy.
5. Edward Hopper’s Laxatives Storefront
In 1927 Hopper delivered a painting entitled Ex Lax—Drug Store to his dealer Frank K. M. Rehn in New York City. Peggy Rehn, the dealer’s wife, felt that the allusion to a laxative was indelicate, and Hopper was persuaded to change the second X to a C, which he did in watercolor. Shortly thereafter, however, John T. Spaulding, a Boston lawyer and collector who favored bold images, bought the painting for $1,500 and encouraged Hopper to restore the product name. Now known as Drug Store, the painting is one of Hopper’s early masterpieces. Many of the themes and devices seen in his later work are evident in this striking picture.
Found on the Museum of Fine Arts.
6. When Photography on Fabrics was all the Rage in 1947
Find the full photostory by Nina Leen in the LIFE Archives.
7. Ancient Thracian city of Seuthopolis
In the 1940s, archaeologists discovered the ancient city of Seuthopolis, the capital seat of the Odrysian Kingdom beginning in the 4th century BCE. Unfortunately, the discovery came too late, because under construction nearby was a reservoir dam, which would soon flood the valley and drown “the best preserved Thracian city in modern Bulgaria.” Now over half a century later, a project proposed by Bulgarian architect Zheko Tilev would uncover and preserve the ruins using “a circular dam wall, resembling a well on the bottom of which, as on a stage, is presented the historical epic of Seuthopolis.”
Found on Pruned.
8. Old decorative stucco ceiling is uncovered during the renovation of a Moscow office building
Found on Reddit
9. Russian Art Nouveau
Found on Pinterest.
10. A guy who wrapped his brother’s present in cement…
Found on Reddit
11. A Brief Round-up of our favourite Kitsch-mas Cheer
Found on Kitschatron.
12. Two Victorian Women building a snow woman, 1892
Found on The Gilded Age Society.
13. The Grey Gardens of Los Angeles
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You can watch their 3-hour documentary ‘Royce & Marilyn: God on a Wheel’ (2007) on Vimeo in the link here.
