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Category / Lost & Found

Signed, Sealed, But Not Always Delivered: The Lost Art of Letterlocking

“I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning” is a heartbreakingly frank line taken from the final letter written by Mary Queen of Scots, on 8th February 1587, the morning of her execution at the command of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. This brutally honest letter, addressed to her brother-in-law,…

The Fantastical World of Mingering Mike, the Imaginary Legend of Soul

When you were young, what did you want to be? An astronaut, a princess, maybe a superhero or president of the world. Mike Stevens dreamt of being a soul super star, he wanted to tour the world, to write and produce award-winning albums and run his own record label. He would star in, write and…

Born into Slavery, She Became the First “Queen of Drag”

It’s a little before 11 PM on April 12th, 1888 in downtown Washington DC. President Grover Cleveland has just finished up a speech on what will become American Somoa, his wife Frances is already asleep, and, four blocks east, at the intersection of F and 12th Street, thirty Black, gay men are having a party.…

It took a Hundred Years and Two Gays to Decode Her Diaries

Anne Lister has recently crept out of the shadows of what was her own gothic novel, penned almost two centuries ago. Like all things of the neo-Gothic late 18th century, hers was also a world of shadows, veils, intrigues and most of all, it concealed her obsessional love for other women. British society was at…

Before There Was Emily in Paris, There Was Sally Jay Gorce

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and well into the beginning of the next, it’s easy to track our fascination with young women attempting to figure out life – they are witty, tenacious, and often keenly perceptive of the world in which they exist and their place within it. Their names have become…

Her Comics were Everything Jim Crow America Never Wanted Black Women to Be

In the comic strip Torchy Brown from Dixie to Harlem, a spunky Black teenager leaves her Mississippi home for the bright lights of Harlem. She’s glamorous, ambitious, clever, and so self-assured that when she sees a sign pointing one way for COLORED and another way for WHITE, her response is, “I’ll just pretend I can’t…

The Camp Culinary Adventures of TV’s First Celebrity Chef

You can’t beat a bit of Fanny, especially in the kitchen. Overshadowed by modern day macho MasterChefs, Fanny Cradock paved the way as the first ever celebrity chef and remains one in a million, like a dish you can perfect just once and never recreate. Spicing up British TV from the mid-1950s-70s, folks tuned in…

A Dinner Party with History’s Most Notorious Art Thieves

Imagine gathering around a dinner table with the guy who stole the Mona Lisa, an heiress who stole a Vermeer, the “gentleman thief” responsible for some of the most sensational art thefts in Europe, and let’s throw an invite to Pablo Picasso for good measure, for his own attitude towards the world of art fraud…

The Bygone Era Of The Hotel Detective

“Saverio Bongiorno had no permanent home and had been living in various midtown hotels. Bongiorno registered at the Edison Hotel on Sunday, with a small beach bag as his only baggage. He was assigned to room 1135 and nothing more was seen or heard of him…James Gerrity, chief house detective of the Hotel Edison, 224…

The Eiffel Tower’s Lost Art Nouveau Restaurant

Meet us for dinner in Paris under the Iron Lady … circa 1900? Over the 135 years since the Eiffel Tower was built, there have been some surprising additions that have come and gone from the site of city’s most iconic landmark. In our archives, we’ve shared the tower’s various transformations and experimental uses, including…
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