Saturday, June 17, 2017

Breakfast Links: Week of June 12, 2017

Saturday, June 17, 2017
Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Strong constitutions: that time when the Founding Fathers racked up a huge bar tab.
The liberated wife who inspired Wonder Woman.
Julia Grant's eyes: a love story.
The etiquette of the Victorian ballroom: twenty tips for single gentleman.
• Stunning 1870 solar system quilt combines needlework and astronomy.
• Ah, the Enlightenment with Thomas Jefferson: when discussing how shells might have spontaneously appeared on land made more sense than geological time.
Image: Colorful summer fashions via The Delineator, July 1915.
• The mother of all apples is disappearing.
• A color chart for woolen cloth from the early 18thc, including the delightful "Gall Stone Brown."
Victorian Monopoly: from The Strand to Jail.
• An early 14thc wonder: the 53-ft tall bishop's throne canopy at Exeter Cathedral.
• The umbrella as a weapon (and why not?)
Image: Swatches of Marie-Antoinette's dresses, preserved in the Archives Nationales.
• The feminist legacy of The Baby-Sitters Club.
For decades inconvenient wives or relatives were committed to the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum.
• Before the garden gnome, there was the ornamental hermit.
• A 14thc garden of love and earthly delights in a flowery mead.
• For Poldark fans: explore the 18thc history behind the show.
Image: Women's March, 17thc style: an army of women confront an army of monsters in this illustration from a 17thc pamphlet.
• Artist Mucha and his muse, pioneers of the Art Nouveau movement.
• A travel guide: the British tourist and Napoleonic Milan.
• From disinfectors to mush-fakers, photographs of real life on the streets of Victorian London.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

2 comments:

Tegan said...

The article on Mucha has Sarah Bernhardt as his muse - it was a little surprising to me that you didn't name drop her! She's outrageously more famous than Mucha. :P

Unknown said...

Fun umbrella weapon story! Aaron Burr once threatened someone with a knife hidden in his umbrella. From his journal: "As I was writing the concluding line of the preceding page last evening (about 1 o'clock) an ill-looking fellow opened my door without knocking, and muttering in German something which I did not comprehend, bid me put out my candle. Being in no very placid humor at the moment, as you see, I cursed him and sent him to hell in French and English. He advanced and was going to seize the candle. My umbrella, which had a dirk in the handle, being near me, I seized it, drew the dirk, and drove him out of the room."

 
Two Nerdy History Girls. Design by Pocket