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

1. Aerial photographs of 1960s communal dining areas in Singapore’s social housing A series by local creative Jonathan Tan found on Creative Boom. 2. For 2,000 years, the waters of the Euphrates have washed over these Roman mosaics in Zeugma, Turkey When plans for new dams on the Euphrates meant that much of Zeugma would be…

Curiosity du Jour: Antique Intaglio Seals

When we stopped writing letters, it wasn’t just our penmanship that went down the toilet, but the entire art of letter-writing, and all the romance and ceremony that came with it. Arguably the loveliest victim to have disappeared from our desks in the wake of its decline? The intaglio seal. Intaglio seals, essentially engraved gems,…

Hidden Under a Chicken Coop: The “Louvre” of Wine

One of the world’s most prestigious wine cellars isn’t where you think it might be. It isn’t nestled beneath a grand chateau or presidential palace, but buried in the backyard of an average Joe, a retiree of humble background who has been collecting the rarest wines, bottle by bottle for the past 50 years. Michel-Jack…

Making a case for Mouthwatering Majolica

They say you are what you eat. But what about what you eat with? We love a good bout of antique hunting, from the Paris Flea Market to one-of-kind auctions – and in matters of dishware, “Majolica” officially has our attention. You can spot the curious ceramics by their decorations of fish, fruit, and other…

Legendary Paris Nightclub of the 80s Reopens as a Cultural Shrine to David Bowie

On a steamy summer night in 1981, it wasn’t unusual to find David Bowie surrounded by Paris’ premiere debs and drag queens, tossing around a blow-up ball in an underground discotheque pool, or Grace Jones singing “La Vie en Rose” on a Harley Davidson at clubs like Le Palace – the French capital’s answer to Studio…

The 19th Century Escort Cards with Pick-Up Lines you definitely haven’t heard before

Without Facebook, online dating sites and lest we dare mention applications like Tinder, in the 19th century, single boys and girls had to be a little more inventive with their dating game. And thus, the American ‘escort card’ or ‘invitation card’ was introduced. It wasn’t exactly used in high society but this handy acquaintance card was…

World War II Love Letters

The other day from across the pond, a New Yorker got in touch with me to ask whether I might be interested in a scrapbook he found at a Brooklyn flea market, made by a young lady leaving New York in 1939 for California to become a theatre director. Of course I was interested, and of…

The Vault

Vintage Pocket Guides to Syria & Beyond for the WW II American Soldier

As someone who writes a guide about the city of Paris and searches for off-beat travel, I can relate to the language of pocket guides. I guess you could say it’s kinda my thing. But what if I wasn’t writing for the leisurely wanderer? What if instead, I was writing for a young, newly-enlisted soldier headed off to war…

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Dig Through the World’s Largest Sketchbook Library

There’s an art library in Brooklyn where anyone and everyone can be a contributor to the collection. It has existed for almost 10 years and yet it’s fittingly one of those wonderfully and unusual things that few New Yorkers know about. The Sketchbook Project has over 35,963 sketchbooks in its library submitted by more than 162,081 creative…

Daguerreotypes of Anonymous African Americans

Simply because we don’t see enough of this– material record of black history, that is. I came across the Randolph Linsly Simpson Collection in Yale’s online archives at the Beinecke Library, which includes letters, prints, film clips and formal studio portraits of African Americans. For more than 25 years, Randolph Linsly Simpson, a white man whose…