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Category / Editor’s Picks

Collectors Item du Jour: The “Pigeon Pink” Treasures of Post-Revolutionary France

I was doing the rounds at my go-to brocante / Aladdin’s cave and caught a glint of some unique pink glassware on a shelf, tucked away behind some kitschy old china. It wasn’t your average bubblegum pink, this was Charles X’s gorge de pigeon, “pigeon’s throat” pink; named as such because it evokes the iridescent…

The Pagan Wild Men of Europe

Slightly terrifying, right? Not the sort of crowd you want to run into alone, in an empty field, with the sounds of chanting coming from the woods yonder. But don’t worry, they only come out at Christmastime to haunt the innocent souls of children. You see, while the rest of us are celebrating the most magical time…

A Haunting Compendium of Paris Ghost Stories

Paris may be the City of Light, but it is filled with dark corners. Some of the best-known ghost stories were inspired by the very real, gory history of this otherwise romantic setting. Behind – and, indeed, beneath – the picturesque Haussmanian facades lurk countless tragic tales, the protagonists of which are still said to…

Sculpted in Paris, a Black Women’s Legacy Finally Comes to Light

In the 1960s, Barbara Chase-Riboud chose Paris as her home and sanctuary away from her upbringing Jim Crow America, and yet frustratingly, for too long, her genius remained quietly overshadowed by the tumultuous tides of history. The Philadelphia-born artist and writer may not be a household name, but her artistic and literary contributions are as…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 715)

1. Currently lusting after these 3D animal portraits: Immediately must have these at the Cabinet. Stay tuned. See more of the artist’s work here. Found while browsing this incredible home in India on AD Magazine. 2. French Kissing by Edouard Boubat We all know that famous kiss of Robert Doisneau, but I found these portraits…

Uncovering Hollywood’s 1920s “Antichrist” Photo Shoots

Somewhere in a dark room almost a century ago, an image emerges of a woman with her skeleton lover. Beside it, another of a gyrating goblin, a pin-up worthy witch, or some other creature from the wonderfully twisted mind of photographer William Mortensen. Today, Mortensen is praised as a pioneer of his profession, a Tim…

America’s First Planetarium is Hoarding the Ultimate Cabinet of Curiosities

I’ve caught the collector’s bug again. What is it this time? Antique astronomy tools. And I’m blaming it on the Adler Planetarium, the first in America and home to one of the world’s largest collections of historic scientific instruments. It all began when I stumbled upon their online collections, a dangerous rabbit hole for those of us…

Did Glam Rock Wrestling Give Bowie and Elton Their Style?

Before Ziggy played guitar, Adrian Street pounded the ring (and the makeup counter) in silver tights. The pro-wrestler changed the game forever in the 1960s when he decided the game needed more panache. More glitter. More glam. He emerged from his chrysalis, that of the former coal miner and man’s man that he was, like…

A Love Letter to the Lost World of the Parisian Pneumatic Post

Years before the Paris Métro opened, there was another subterranean transport system rattling away beneath the city streets. Instead of messages floating around in the internet ether of apps and social networks, if you wanted to send a note to someone in your city in the 19th century, you tube. A network of sealed lines…

Free the Nipple, says History

Nipple slips must have been a real problem in the 17th century. Or rather, not so much a problem per se, as an everyday practice. If you’ve ever walked around a portrait gallery of Renaissance European art or watched a few period films set around that time when the cup did truly runneth over, you…

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