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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Nostalgia

The “Other” Lost Generation of Black American Artists in Paris

Originally, this was supposed to be a pretty straight-forward piece on an American ex-pat artist whose enchanting paintings of 1930s Paris I’d recently had the fortune of stumbling across via the internet. She was a young woman who had moved to France before the war, where her painting career began to flourish. I was going…

She Was a Black Librarian Who Could Equal America’s Most Powerful Man

Today, we meet a heroine by the name of Belle da Costa Greene. Under the honey-hued lights of Manhattan’s Morgan Library, she became the guardian of the world’s greatest cultural treasures: not one but three Gutenberg bibles, illuminated manuscripts, originals by Da Vinci, Mozart, Michelangelo, and others – the list goes on (in its very own…

In Defence of Clutter: The American Castle of a Renaissance Hoarder

Forget the great and gaudy Hearst Castle – why don’t they talk about Fonthill Castle? Now that’s a house worth seeing. Some might call him America’s first hoarder, but for any aspiring collector or lover of eclectic arts, Pennsylvania’s most underrated treasure is an astonishing visual treat at every turn, telling the story of a…

For Sale: The Victorian Butcher Shop You Never Knew You Needed

So generously preserved of its original features, you can almost imagine a portly butcher emerging from his back room to ask whether you want the Sirloin cut or Tenderloin. And yet this “rare survival” in North London has managed to find new life as a wonderful two-bedroom home with a kitchen and front room to…

A Bucket List of Star Cities Scattered Across our Globe

Next to pasta primavera, star forts have to be one of the coolest things the Italians ever made. Dreamt up in the 15th century to withstand onslaught of a little something called cannonballs, today these hypnotic fortresses appeal to our contemporary imaginations like crossover creations of fantasy genres – Star Wars, but make it Medieval…

Before the Internet, there was the 1960s Dial-a-Poem Hotline

On any given night in 1970, a teen somewhere in rural America could dial a number and hear the radical wisdom of Patti Smith, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Bourroughs – the list of poets was long, and painfully hip. One needed only the ten sacred digits of “Dial-a-Poem,” a revolutionary hotline that connected…

An Ode to the Unexpected Whimsy (and Strength) of Your Mail Delivery

It was the Little Mail Truck Who Could. An odd American vehicle – looking more like a patriotic Good & Plenty than a post truck – but by the 1960s, the “Mailster” made up one-third of the post’s vehicular fleet, according to The Smithsonian, somehow schlepping 500 lbs of brown paper packages tied up with…

That 1960s Revolution of the Underground Press is Still Alive & Well

Let’s go back for a moment to the swinging sixties in London’s Notting Hill. Portobello Road is the main artery of the hippie movement, heaving with bohemians musicians and freethinking “freaks”, as they’re known to the establishment. Jimmy Hendrix hasn’t yet taken a fatal overdose in his flat and British counter-culture is on the rise.…

Nature’s Humble Gold: The Unexpected Elegance of Straw Craft

And now, for a DIY project at the intersection of spooky and cozy: the corn doll – which isn’t always in the form of a doll, mind you. That term is shorthand for any kind of straw artwork, be it a horseshoe or a crown, a dog or a pentagram. We love it because it’s…
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