Saturday, June 13, 2015

Breakfast Links: Week of June 8, 2015

Saturday, June 13, 2015
Fresh for your weekend browsing - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images, gathered for  you via Twitter.
• On the way to masculinity: women in trousers, 1914.
• Beautiful photographs of a visit to Dr. Johnson's house in London.
• How ritual vessels from China's Bronze Age have influenced various modern objects.
• The nightwalker and the nocturnal picaresque: 17thc. London at night.
• Two late 19thc. albums lead to the story of an African-American family in North Adams, MA.
• Now digitized and online thanks to Cornell University: Harper's Bazaar, 1867-1900.
Images: Advertisements from the 1960s: "When boredom and fatigue bring on Housewife Headache."
Knitting and sewing for girls at an 18thc. charity school.
• Defining the abstract concept of deep nerdery: the definitive post on James Bond's suits.
• The New York Female Giants: briefly a league of their own, c 1913.
• Preserved and full-dressed corpse of 350-year-old French noblewoman discovered.
• William Anthony, the last of the Charlies.
Image: Fleet Market was built on the culverted Fleet River in 1736, in turn was cleared in 1829 to build Farringdon Street in London.
• The complicated history of the tampon.
• Useful historical textile booklet "toolkits" to download free from UK's Design & Textile Specialists.
• Dear Librarian: the New York Public Library reveals some of its quirkiest inquiries.
• Twenty-one morbidly fascinating things from Scotland Yard's crime museum.
Image: Autographed seating plan for an 1877 dinner with many literary luminaries: Longfellow, Emerson, Howell, more.
• Hodge, Samuel Johnson's favorite cat.
Etheldreda Laing: portraits by a pioneering early 20thc. color photographer.
• Death by hair.
• The Victorian fraudster who unwittingly acquired Henry VII's marital bed.
Image: Oxford's High Street has changed very little in 200 years: Turner's 1810 painting & a modern photograph.
• Ancient gladiator school linked to the Colosseum in Rome to be restored.
• Poignant photographs of suitcases & belongings of incoming patients of Willard (NY) Psychiatric Center, 1910-1960; most never left.
• Georgian actor David Garrick's homage to Shakespeare in the form of a garden folly.
Image: See how your country estate will look before and after improvements.
• True blue: A brief history of the color ultramarine.
• Queer as folk: the fantastical costumes of old English festivals.
• The sad fate of William Pitt the Younger's childhood home.
• A wealthy NYC dry goods merchant gave his son this lavish mansion as a holiday gift in 1908.
Medicine and surgery at Waterloo.
• Novelist Georgette Heyer's birthplace now honored with an English Heritage Blue Plaque.
Image: Just for fun: Who needs an editor, anyway?
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

8 comments:

Hels said...

The photos and text of Dr Johnson's House are fantastic. I have been to the home but some of those images are bigger and better than I have ever seen. Many thanks for highlighting the post.

Christine Adams said...

How I relish my Breakfast Links! Thanks for your peripatetic interests which so often coincide with mine!

Josie said...

Oh how I adore this every week! Perfect way to start a lazy Sunday. Thank you so much for compiling this!

Karen Anne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Karen Anne said...

Does anyone know why the exterior of Johnson's house is blackened? My first thought was coal, but it seems like a regular pattern of black and red, yet somewhat odd.

Isabella Bradford/Susan Holloway Scott said...

Karen Anne ~ The darkened bricks almost look as if they're painted, and so does the grout around them. It also looks like other buildings in the photographs have the same appearance. Just guessing, however. Hope someone out there knows for certain! :)

Nancy said...

I especially liked the statute of the cat and oyster shell sitting atop a book. Mr. Johnson's favorite things, perhaps?

Isabella Bradford/Susan Holloway Scott said...

Nancy, that's a portrait tribute to Dr. Johnson's very favorite cat, named Hodge. The oysters were Hodge's treat, a special indulgence granted by his owner. Here's a blog post (I think it was in an earlier Breakfast Links, too) about this special literary cat: http://mimimatthews.com/2015/06/04/hodge-samuel-johnsons-favorite-cat/?utm_content=buffer498cf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 
Two Nerdy History Girls. Design by Pocket