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Category / Editor’s Picks

America’s Vampire Sweetheart: Valeska Suratt

Forget the flappers. It’s time to talk about the “vampires” of yesteryear and their fiery queen of the screen and stage, Valeska Suratt. The Vamps or “vampires” were the female actors that paved the way for the flapper in the 1910s-20s and, in many ways, they were an extension of something exciting brewing in America.…

Morse Code Mine Dancing: A Language Born in the Darkness

Born in the darkness of South African gold mines during Apartheid, “gumboot dancing” sprung from the basic need for exploited miners to communicate in what was a harrowing environment, where they were forbidden to even speak to one another. Workers decided to let their boots do the talking for them, and developed a kind of “morse…

Don’t Call Her the Dragon Lady: Hollywood’s First Chinese American Star

Wong Liu Tsong was born on Los Angeles’ Flower Street in 1905 – a rather befitting location for a gal whose Cantonese name meant “frosted yellow willow.” Most U.S. moviegoers, however, would get to know her under a more American moniker: Anna May Wong, the “Dragon Lady” of Hollywood. Wong was just your average California girl…

Oh, to Have Ridden England’s Forgotten Post Bus

I never knew the post bus existed. I grew up in England’s capital, but never in my 25 years of living there did I ever see or hear of these delightful red buses that both delivered mail and served as the only public transport in some of the UK’s most remote areas. Then again, until the…

The Floating Basket Homes of Iraq: A Paradise Almost Lost to Saddam

It was Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’; unique wetlands in southern Iraq where a people known as the Ma’dan, or ‘Arabs of the marsh’, lived in a Mesopotamian Venice, characterised by beautifully elaborate floating houses made entirely of reeds harvested from the open water. These little-known architectural wonders are known as a ‘mudhif’; built without nails, wood or glass…

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

1. This Most Excellent New Yorker Cover The New Yorker. 2. 160 Years of Ice Skating in New York City Ice skating in New York reveals the history of social spaces in the city that helped shape the foundations of modern life. Found on HyperAllergic 3. This Pair of Steampunk Goggles And…

She Raced the Boys and Took Their Trophies

She began driving secretly at the age of 14 in her father’s ‘borrowed’ Citroën 2CV and her earliest races took place on the gravel roads of the French riviera, trying to carve off the journey time between work and home in a Renault 4. Michèle Mouton became the first woman in rally driving to win a…

Unexpected Beauty Hiding Inside America’s Last Fabric Factories

Waterfalls of technicolor thread, giant Singer sewing machines, endless patterns and the occasional intervention of man; you can almost hear the humming of spinning frames in Christopher Payne’s photographs. For his series called Textiles, the architect and photographer documented twenty-five of the last textile mills in New England, some a century and one dating back to the Civil War. Despite our…

The 1960s Pucci Air Hostess Uniforms, Ideal for Mile High “Stripping”

I was doing my daily browse through Pinterest and came across this eye-popping photograph of two ladies wrapped around the staircase of an airplane cabin, unmistakably decked out in head to toe Pucci prints. By now we’re probably all aware that mid-century air travel was the bee’s knees, but surely, no airline ever actually dressed their…

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

1. A Pink Scottish Castle Craigievar Castle, from this lovely Instagram account, touring the UK in a Morris Minor. 2. This 1930s LA Home For Sale comes with a key to famous High Tower elevator Accessed by the famous High Tower elevator, the Streamline Moderne-ish residence contains four bedrooms and 4.5 baths within its 2,616…

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