Celebrating spring with the maypole

By | April 26th, 2023|Categories: Holidays, Victorian culture, Victorian Era, Victorian Era Celebrations|

How are you celebrating the arrival of spring? I will be spending a few days in the mountains next week, both as a farewell to the long winter we have had in Denver and also for my birthday which lands on May 3rd. I will be following in a long tradition of venturing out into [...]

All About April

By | April 6th, 2023|Categories: Easter, Holidays|Tags: , |

Robin Williams said that “spring is nature’s way of saying ‘let’s party!'” I’ve always thought that was quite a cute way of looking at it, and even more so this year after having been through such a long winter here in Denver. And even though it snowed all day long yesterday, it is meant to [...]

Vintage St. Paddy's Day cards to make you feel the luck of the Irish

By | March 16th, 2023|Categories: Holidays, St. Patrick's Day|Tags: |

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, dear customers! There is something in the air about this holiday this year and we have been enjoying celebrating all month long on our social media channels. (If you aren’t following us yet go and find us on Facebook and Instagram!) We know that many of you enjoy getting in the [...]

Happy Valentine's Day!

By | February 12th, 2023|Categories: Holidays, Regency Era, Valentine's Day, Victorian Era, Victorian Era Celebrations|Tags: |

We love Valentine’s Day here at Recollections! Perhaps it is because the Victorians embraced it so much. Whatever the case, we look forward to it and have enjoyed creating some great content over the last few years. We also love using it as an occasion to express love and appreciation for our customers and readers. [...]

19th-century Valentine's gifts (to make you swoon)

By | February 9th, 2023|Categories: Holidays, Valentine's Day, Victorian culture, Victorian Era|Tags: |

Several months back I came across a framed glove on the Victoria and Albert Museum website. Upon further inspection, I was pleased to discover that it was a Valentine from 1836 from an unknown person to their unknown lover. It got me more than curious about the possibility of other existing 19th-century Valentine’s gifts. I [...]

2022 Christmas – New Year Photo Contest

By | January 22nd, 2023|Categories: Christmas, Contests and Games, Uncategorized|

Thank you to all of our wonderful customers who entered the Christmas - New Year 2022 Photo Contest. The panel of judges made up of members of the Recollections crew thought these first 5 photos best captured the spirit of the holidays! The runners-up follow. Visit us at recollections.biz – we design and manufacture history-inspired [...]

Head-scratching Victorian Christmas cards

By | December 26th, 2022|Categories: Christmas, Holidays, Victorian culture, Victorian Era|

Happy Holidays! I have such an interest in learning new things about Victorian culture. Last year I discovered that clovers and pigs were popular symbols to represent the start of a new year and were featured on greeting cards for decades. I wondered if there was a similar thing to learn about 19th-century Christmas cards [...]

Holiday reading: from daring Victorians to It’s a Wonderful Life and MUCH more

By | December 19th, 2022|Categories: Christmas, Holidays|

Happy Holidays, dear customers! It has been a great year at Recollections and we are so thankful for all of you and your support. It has also been a great year for the blog and we are hard at work planning another great year of content. In the meantime, I thought it may be fun [...]

The Victorian Study of Snowflakes

By | December 3rd, 2022|Categories: Christmas, Victorian Era|

Victorians were innovators with a deep curiosity about the natural world. They also had a real knack for creating beautiful visuals, especially to our modern sensibilities. As we saw in my look at the life of Marianne North a couple of weeks ago, their scientific explorations often ended with beautiful aesthetics that we still enjoy [...]