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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Nostalgia

Ode to the Ice Man

In his autobiography Timebends, Arthur Miller recalls an occupation lost in time – that of the ice man, who wore “leather vests and a wet piece of sackcloth slung over the right shoulder, and once they had slid the ice into the box, they invariably slipped the sacking off and stood there waiting, dripping, for their money.” From…

Where America’s Lost Luggage Ends Up

Every traveler has experienced it at some point: that sinking feeling of watching all the other suitcases reunited with their weary owners at baggage claim but not seeing your own slide down the conveyor belt. While you stand there forlornly, wondering where your luggage has gone without you (and how many pairs of underwear you…

The Peculiar Flapper Fad of Rouged and Decorated Knees

The infamous nightclub singer and vaudevillian, Velma Kelly, opens the musical Chicago in a sleek bob haircut, slinky black dress and all the glamour and sin of the swinging 1920s. She’s going to “paint the town”, play fast and loose… and “rouge her knees and roll her stockings down”? The last line might seem nonsensical…

A Strange Abandoned Hiking Lodge No One Knew was Designed by Gaudi Himself

The world’s greatest artists aren’t supposed to have their work overlooked or unattributed, but it happens more than you might think. In museums, private collections, and public spaces, there is a myriad of artworks that remain unidentified. It took years for a total of nine Van Gogh ‘fakes’ painted during the last four years of…

Manhattan’s Long Lost Era of Loft Jazz

Once upon a time, before Manhattan priced out its young talent, you had to be an artist to live in SoHo. And in the late 1960s and 70s, a cultural phenomenon known as “Loft Jazz” came into existence in downtown Manhattan’s abandoned industrial spaces. Eclectic, edgy and often Black musicians turned Soho’s neglected lofts into…

Were an Ancient Christian Sect of Nudists the World’s First Hippies?

Today we’re taking a brief look at some hippie heretics of yore known as the Adamites. The 2nd century Christian sect, claimed that its members were re-established in Adam and Eve’s state of original innocence, called their church “Paradise”, practised “holy nudism”, rejected marriage and pretty much claimed they could do whatever the heck they…

The Soundtrack To A Lost Country: Rock Music in the GDR

To the leaders of Communist East Germany, nothing was quite as dangerous and potentially subversive to their nation’s youth as Western rock and pop music. By 1965, Beatlemania may have been at its height with the band regularly attracting seventy million viewers on the Ed Sullivan show, but behind the Iron Curtain, the Party State…

The Rare Jewels Salvaged from America’s Old Auto Factories

What’s more finite and limited than diamonds? Surely not something found on the skids of an old car factory? Well get this: in the 1940s, the American automobile industry started painting cars with a hand-spraying technique that would accumulate overspray, which would build up and be baked repeatedly in ovens to cure the paint on…

What’s Up with all the Lady Parts in Medieval Prayer Books?

Let’s say you’re flipping through a medieval Christian prayer book (as you do), and suddenly you come across a curious illustration amongst the prayers and psalms of something that looks unmistakably like female genitalia. A scolding voice in your head tells you to get your mind out of the gutter. But you wouldn’t be alone.…
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