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Category / People / Icons / Muses

Ode to the Rag-and-Bone Man

When Parisian garbage collectors went on strike in the Spring of 2023, suddenly everyone was talking and thinking about trash. Sanitation and waste management services are so commonplace for the majority of the world, it takes an almighty “big stink” for us to realise just how important and valuable sanitary services are. Just under a…

All Hail Rosaleen Norton and her Wicked Cool Revival of Witchcraft

When did witchcraft actually become “cool”? At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, three witches chanting “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble, something wicked this way comes”, were described as ‘old bearded hags’ by the playwright. Persecuted and hunted by the church for centuries but now popularised in modern culture, the hashtag…

Footnoted as Modigliani’s First Muse: The 13 Voices of a Modernist Pioneer

It’s the first decade of the twentieth century, and you’re in London reading the avant-garde weekly magazine, The New Age. A writer you’ve been enjoying, a women’s suffrage advocate named Beatrice Tina has been arguing, via the “Letters to the Editor” section, with someone called D. Triformis. But recently, they’ve managed to find some common…

Forget Versailles, Tune into the Forgotten Château that Became France’s Abbey Road

Imagine the sweet sound of a duet between Elton John and Frédéric Chopin, or a Van Gogh painting interpreted in song by David Bowie. What if the lyrics for a Fleetwood Mac verse or a Pink Floyd anthem were ghost written by the famed 19th century female novelist George Sand? There’s only one place that…

A Spiritual Revisiting of the Lost Beatles Ashram

‘Roll up! Roll up! for the mystery tour’… a mystery indeed, given the chaos that subsequently engulfed The Beatles on their return from India to the West in 1968. Following the ground breaking success of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Fab Four plus an entourage of no less than 60 people (including wives,…

Meet Quentin Tarantino’s Secret Muse, the Queen of Vintage Japanese B-Movies

Jetting back to 1970s Japan, let’s get to know sultry film icon, actress, singer, and all-round badass Meiko Kaji. She rose to fame during the seventies at the height of what was known as the “pinky violence” Japanese film genre, which were essentially sexed up, bad girl action films produced by Toei, one of the…

Update from his Ghost Town: Time Capsules, Mine Exploration & Disaster

It’s been 7 months since our Zoom Date with the guy who bought a ghost town and 8 months since he started living there alone as the pandemic took hold of the United States. A lot has happened in the abandoned mining town of Cerro Gordo since. We’ll start with the bad heartbreaking news. The…

The Forgotten Housewife who Invented your Dishwasher

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Case in point: there’s a certain 19th century American housewife and single mother we should thank for giving us the mechanical dishwasher. You’ve probably never heard of her but Mrs. Cochrane forever changed the landscape of household chores and revolutionised the kitchen. Fed up of…

The Famous Parisian Potheads of the Belle Epoque

Ah, Belle Epoque Paris: a lost world of artists, writers, dancers, philosophers and …. potheads? Today, we’re getting acquainted with the long forgotten Club des Hashischins, “Club of the Hashish-Eaters”, a 19th century gang of Parisians dedicated to drug-induced experiences, whose members included a gaggle of the most prolific intellectual names, including Victor Hugo, Alexandre…

Meet the President’s Daughter, a “Wild Animal That Had Been Put Into Good Clothes”

In a world rife with lifestyle influencers and “content houses,” where building one’s own notoriety is big business, it’s tempting to dismiss being famous for being famous as the most banal and basic kind of renown. But there was a time, with a burgeoning American press beginning to define itself and a brash and pithy…

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