Hundreds of Awesome Vintage Sea Flags hidden away in a Museum

It’s amazing what secret treasures museums don’t display. Hidden away in the back rooms of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England are 1000’s of flags used to identify navy vessels and shipping lines throughout history. The museum is constrained by conservation and space resources but they’ve done a very good job of documenting most of them in an…

The Original Hilton Sisters

Before Paris and Niki graced the tabloid headlines, it was the siamese sisters of Vaudeville – Daisy and Violet Hilton – who were the talk of the town. Are you in for some glamour? Deception? Love scandals? Intrigue? The original Hilton sisters had it all… Daisy and Violet were born in Brighton, England, in 1908. Their…

Documenting Africa’s Old Cinemas

Sneaking around old art deco cinemas is something we like to do quite often on this site as you know, but today I came across something a little further afield. Starting in Angloa, Germany’s cultural Goethe-Institut is putting together a fascinating website dedicated entirely to documenting the architecture of Africa’s old cinemas; photographing them, mapping them and…

A Portal to Bygone Bohemian Paris in the Oldest House of Montmartre

I‘m always looking for a taste of la vie bohème and ways to immerse myself in old world Paris; dare I say it’s become a bit of a habit of mine. So when I want to block out the noise of the modern city and really feel time travelling backwards, there’s one place that always does the trick. Follow me inside…

The Town where Unwanted Architecture Found a Home

If you were to take photographs of the most charming villages from around the world and make a collage of their most picture-perfect views, you’d get a pretty good representation of what Portmeirion looks like. An enchanted technicolor mish mash of architecture, built in the 1920s by one wizard of a man, let’s take a…

Window Shop in Art Deco Paris

It was a lucky link I found on Pinterest that led me by chance to the digital image catalogue of the Wolfsonian-FIU, a treasure trove of rare books rescued from obscurity. Deep within the collection of more than 100,000 images, two dog-eared books acquired from the French archives published in the early 1930s have been digitally…

Place your Bets on the Fate of this Crumbling Casino

It was the crown jewel of Romania’s “Monte Carlo”; a pearl watching over the Black Sea where royalty and the elite flocked from all over Europe and wealthy travellers spoke of it around the world, recounting stories of their extravagant gambling escapades at the Casino Constanta. It’s unmistakable art deco shapes and lines are still in tact, and from…

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

1. These school chalkboards frozen in time, untouched since 1917 This week, contractors removing old chalkboards at Emerson High School in Oklahoma City made a startling discovery: Underneath them rested another set of chalkboards, untouched since 1917. “The penmanship blows me away, because you don’t see a lot of that anymore,” Emerson High School Principal Sherry Kishore…

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Greetings from the Colonies: Postcards of a Shameful Past

Of course we’re all familiar with the postcard as a small souvenir we send to friends and family from faraway vacations, or as something we buy to decorate our walls. But are you familiar with the postcard as a form of European colonial propaganda? Postcards were invented around 1860 (at a time when European countries were…

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A Guide to Wes Anderson’s Paris

Did you know Wes Anderson lives in Paris? When he’s not off making one of his beautifully idiosyncratic films, the director keeps a low profile in his Parisian apartment and office, no doubt decorated as charmingly as his movie sets. We’ve been invited into Wes’ whimsical world through his lens, but we know very little about Wes Anderson’s Paris. So…