The holidays are here, and boy, don’t we all need it? It’s been a year of struggles for all of us, and I can tell how much people are looking forward to being with their families and to enjoying some comforts as we wait for the fresh start of the new year. And some of [...]
I love looking at Victorian greeting cards. The style is so charming and there are a lot of things I find quite humorous about how they celebrated holidays back then and what the cards teach us about their attitudes and culture. For instance, I love that there is so often a romantic angle in many [...]
As a blogger of the history of fashion, I am always interested when I see a surge of interest in a particular trend of the past. One such thing that I’ve noticed is the attention given to the hair jewelry of the Victorian era. While such pieces have been on display in museums and passed [...]
"To the unrefined or unbred, the visiting card is but a trifling and insignificant bit of paper; but to the cultured disciple of social law, it conveys a subtle and unmistakable intelligence. Its texture, style of engraving, and even the hour of leaving it combine to place the stranger, whose name it bears, in a [...]
Our readers and customers really love Halloween. That is a delight to me, as it is my favorite holiday. I love the chance to dress up, go to parties, and have all sorts of festive fun without all of the pressures associated with the upcoming winter holidays. I also enjoy it because one of my [...]
Last week I explored the Victorian croquet craze and the role that flirtation played in the game’s quick rise in popularity. Young men and women delighted in the opportunity for casual socializing and flocked to lawns around England and America to interact. It lost as many fans as it gained, however, with many losing their [...]
Wanting to do a seasonally-appropriate post on popular Victorian summer activities, I decided to take a look at the history of croquet. For a few decades, the game was undeniably the most popular pastime in both England and America. With an absence of socially acceptable mixed-gender activities, young people especially flocked to lawns to take [...]
Last week I wrote about Edwardian depictions of women and the threat that many men felt about women claiming more and more independence in the early 1900s. One of the common depictions was of a wife heading out of the house with the husband forced to stay at home and attend to the laundry. This, [...]
I don’t know about you, but to me, it feels like a decade since the last summer. Having the pandemic hit in the middle of winter and summer has made carefree days of warm weather seem like a far off dream, and it feels so good to know that it is fast approaching. So, let’s [...]