She’s been Drawing her Road Trips in Sketchbooks for 20 Years

There’s something about art and travel that goes so well together, something that’s more romantic about taking out a moleskin notebook and drawing the view than simply snapping it with your phone. Of course, it helps if you’re a gifted artist like Chandler O’Leary who has been recording her travels in sketchbooks for over 20 years. The Washington-based illustrator…

Inside an English Pub Buried for a Quarter of a Century

Our favourite local hangouts sometimes come and go sadly, you just have to be hopeful that something better might come along in its place. But when one local pub in the English university town of Leicester closed up shop, it didn’t exactly find new management and change up the menu or décor. When The Green Man pub went out of business,…

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

1. Victorian Portraits of Women Breastfeeding It may seem strange that the Victorian era with its heavily layered clothing and modesty would have not decried these photographs as obscenity, so it’s important to consider the personal meaning of a daguerreotype. These were not public images, but private mementos, folded in their metal velvet-lined cases and kept…

Terrifying Breast Enhancers of Yesteryear

Allow me to translate for you … BREAST FIRMING via fast, pressurised cold water affusion that showers the breast without getting wet, making the muscular fibers of the mammary glands contract, without touching the delicate tip. Easy to use, the water arrives under pressure through the metallic tube. A pleasureful and useful massage. For normal breasts. 125 Francs.…

French Swag on Stilts

I assumed the impossible practice of walking on stilts was solely for the circus or a merry band of vagabond street performers. Alas, these ‘impossible’ contraptions were extremely valuable methods of transport to the French shepherds of Landes in the south-western farmlands. Believe it or not, until the beginning of the 20th century, stilts were actually used…

Mona (Marilyn) Monroe, the $10-an-Hour Pin-Up Model

In 1946, a nineteen year-old aspiring actress in Hollywood was in need of a job, and fast. Born Norma Jean Dougherty, destined to become Marilyn Monroe, but in between, for those not-so-squeaky-clean modelling jobs, she preferred to go by Mona– with a going rate of $10 an hour. It’s often thought that the first nude modelling Monroe did was…

The Vault

Shopping for City Relics destined for Demolition

Awesome places get demolished and modernised whether we like it or not. But have you ever wondered where some of their contents end up? In New York City, before the wrecking ball hits, a Harlem-based company called The Demolition Depot makes it their business to go in and salvage the irreplaceable pieces of a building’s…

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For Sale! Parisian Dream Home du Jour

A little fixer-upper in Paris– isn’t that what most of us dream about? It’s a common past time for me to check the local Parisian listings for property I can’t afford and once in a while, something pops up and brings out my inner Goldilocks– you know, that impulsive little girl who discovers an enchanting home in the…

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

1. This Unreal Library It’s unimaginable to think a library like this could ever be demolished. But thankfully, the incredible Peabody Library was spared. People even get married here. 2. Books in a Bookcase in a Book Found on the Book Lover Tumblr. 3. My Cub Scout Log Book (1957) Found at an estate auction…

She Spent her Life Hunting for Lost Wallpaper

I found another thing I wish I’d been born a few decades earlier for: vintage wallpaper hunting. Suzanne Lipschutz got there before everyone else. She was the first, the original crazy bohemian lady from New York who scoured the earth, from Paris flea market stalls to hardware stores in small town middle America, in search of forgotten wall…