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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Nostalgia

The Gibson Family Album of Shipwrecks

The Gibsons are my kind of family. Papa John Gibson, a local seaman from Penzance, took his first photograph of a shipwreck in 1869 and from then on, he and his family were determined to be first on the scene. His two sons, Alexander and Herbert perfected the art of photographing the dramatic wrecks. Each glass…

Found: A German Soldier’s WWII Scrapbook

There’s something enchanting about coming across an old scrapbook; more than just a photo album, a lovingly put together book of ephemera can be a unique window into a life lived elsewhere. We previously found a marvellous one once at the Brooklyn Flea Market, made by an aspiring young actress in the 1930s making her…

The Forgotten Power of the Parlour Palm

We forget that once upon a time, social status had a lot to do with the common houseplant. We’re talking about the parlour palm, one of the most significant decorative features in a Victorian home, which referred to any number of varieties of palms, ferns, and other hardy perennials that were native to South America,…

The Toilet Duty Dukes and Duchesses of England

Those precious moments of alone time in the bathroom are priceless to many of us, and yet strangely enough, it was one of the few luxuries the King and Queen of England could not afford. Until as recently as the 20th century, the British monarchy appointed what was known as the “Groom of the Stool”, a courtier responsible for…

The Ghost Bath Houses of Paris

I was researching old Parisian advertisements from the 19th century (as you do) when I came across this one for a palatial Turkish bath house near the opera house. Behind its vaulted arches, magnificent mosaics were lit by stars of coloured glass and according to a 19th century ‘Bather’s Guide’ to Paris, the establishment boasted Roman-Turkish hammams,…

The Pictures that Redefined Photography as a Fine Art

It would take most people a moment to figure out that the images above aren’t charcoal sketches by Degas or some other Impressionist artist. These are in fact photographs from the late 19th century, artfully manipulated to look like paintings. They were made at a time when it hadn’t yet occurred to most of the…

Forget the Scenic Route, Take a Detour Down a Corpse Road

Walk with us, as we follow ancient trails where the living once carried the dead. We’ll be traversing Europe’s rural landscapes via a network of so-called “corpse roads”, occasionally marked with crucifixes and low stone benches, cutting across windswept hills, overgrown pastures, gushing rivers and rocky brooks. In Britain alone, 42 of these little-known funerary…

America’s Last Juke Joints

Before the Juke Box, there was the Juke Joint, a reverberating sanctum of the Mississippi Delta and the indefinable heartbeat of southern African American culture. The traditional Juke Joint seems to have grown out of the landscape more than it was constructed. A ramshackle collection of lost and found, partner to the barrel house and…

The Ruin and Revival of the City that Built America

Some American companies are such a part of our everyday lives, they’re taken for granted, the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google for example. But there is another company that although it can be seen everywhere, no-one notices. Even more mysteriously, the company no longer exists. But walk through any American city, or picture its greatest…

Muse du Jour: France’s Legendary Surrealist Stripper

Let’s catapult straight into the centre of Paris’ exotic dancing universe, the Crazy Horse Saloon, temple of burlesque. This glamorous establishment has had the pleasure of seeing a stellar selection of glamorous women strut and strip their stuff over the decades since opening in 1951 on the Avenue George-V: Dita Von Teese, Pamela Anderson and…
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