Friday, May 3, 2024
Of course, everyone has heard of the horrors of historical corsetry in modern media, especially corsets of the Victorian era. All too famous scenes of Elizabeth Swann dramatically fainting from her restrictive 18th century stays in Pirates of the Caribbean or Scarlett O’Hara gripping her bedpost as Mammy yanks the […]
King Louis XIV of France strolls through the famous Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Sparkling crystal chandeliers tower above his wigged head, as well as the vaulted ceiling, 40 feet in height and covered in extravagant murals idolizing him as the Sun King. Seventeen giant mirrors, the height of luxury […]
St. Petersburg, Russia. December 1892. Gentlemen with carefully trimmed beards and ladies dressed in the eccentric puffy-sleeved dresses of the 1890s pack themselves into the Imperial Mariinsky Theater on a blustering Russian night for the very first performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Italian ballerina Antoinetta dell’Era laces up the ribbons […]
The White House, early 1860s. The sixteenth president of the United States, his wife, Mary, and a few honored guests dine from luxurious china in the Presidential dining room. Midway through the formal dinner, an unaccounted-for guest enters: one of Abraham Lincoln’s two cats, Tabby. With a few meows, Tabby […]
Rome. Early 1500s. Imagine standing on a flimsy platform held up by scaffolding, around 40 feet above the floor, craning your neck up at a ceiling whilst painting lifelike frescoes on wet plaster. Imagine wet plaster and paint dripping onto your face for hours a day. Imagine doing this work […]