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Category / Inspiration Vault

The Hotel of Childhood Memories: An Old Italian Schoolhouse turned Charming B&B

Perhaps the last thing you want to do on holiday is “go back to school”, but I can assure you, this little schoolhouse nestled in the picturesque province of Vicenza, a 90 minute drive from Venice, is nothing like the school days you remember. No grumpy Maths teachers, no caféteria slop for lunch and certainly…

A Brief Compendium of the Traveling Salesman’s Vintage Sample Case

Unlike most of the vintage stuff we tend to get nostalgic about on this blog, I’m not sure travelling salesmen of yesteryear rapping their knuckles on our front doors is something we’d necessarily want to bring back. While I do like to touch and feel what I’m buying, briefcase-carrying bowler hat-wearing door to door sellers hawking…

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…

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…

The Extraordinary Guests of Charles Babbage’s Saturday Night Soirées

Forget your standard 19th-century dinner parties, where everyone sat around sipping sherry and discussing the weather. If you were lucky enough to snag an invite to Charles Babbage’s Saturday night scientific soirées, you were in for a wild ride through the brainiest and most bizarre conversations that Victorian London had to offer. Picture a mad…

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…

Forgotten Object du Jour: The Vinaigrette

Pass the vinaigrette! No, not the salad dressing – we’re talking about the vinaigre de toilette. You’re forgiven for the confusion, being born in the wrong century and all. Let’s rewind about 150 years when a vinaigrette once commonly referred to a small container for smelling salts or aromatic vinegar that were used to cover…

Overnight at the Prime Minister’s Library & other Bookshop Hotels

If you’d rather camp outside than stay in a soulless hotel chain on holiday, join the club. But today, we’re taking our charming hotel search to another level. Bookworms and library lovers gather round, because we’ve got 5 overnight stays where you can eat, sleep and dream about books… (okay, maybe not eat books). Pack your…

An Educational Haven at Harlem’s Little Black Book Shop turned B&B

Kurt Thometz’s bookshop was not the norm. Harlem’s white-owned all-Black bookstore almost seemed like a glimpse into an alternate universe where blackness dictates the principle narrative of society. It was “provocative”, “dangerous” even, to be confronted by such an unfamiliar dynamic. Rare book collector, Kurt Thometz, opened Jumel Terrace Books on the lower ground floor…

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