We are going to try out a new feature here on Recollections! Knowing how much our community loves all things history, fashion, and women’s history related we will now be gathering news stories through the month that includes the latest in research on each topic. What history news would you like us to make sure [...]
Victorian wedding dresses are a sight for any eyes - sore or otherwise. The era was a big time for weddings as life was becoming more public and both parties were increasingly given more say in who they met at the end of the aisle. Queen Victoria herself is a great example of this gradual [...]
I have a new hobby! I am a big fan of hand-lettering and a big history enthusiast. I recently decided to combine two of my passions and start lettering with a fountain pen. That naturally led me down an internet rabbit hole of trying to learn about the history of fountain pens and their related [...]
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 and loved [...]
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 [...]
I love looking at vintage botanical illustrations and have wanted to cover the history of the art form for a long time. I started to dig in over the last month and was pleased to discover that an Englishwoman was one of the more influential leaders of the Victorian movement to explore and document natural [...]
There is something so satisfying about depictions of 19th-century letter exchanges. The paper appears thick and high quality, the letting is in cursive writing which is so rare these days, and of course, the wax seals they are often closed with. Communicating this way must have made each correspondence somewhat significant, more so than the [...]
Tis the season to be spooky! I have always considered poison rings to be a dark and mysterious item from the past though have never been able to learn much about them. Well, I know now that they have fairly ancient roots that extend to the present day, something that we don’t see very often [...]
"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne It is a great autumn season here in Denver. Luckily we haven’t had snow yet, and the leaves are getting brighter by the day. I know [...]