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 [...]
I am a big fan of cute, little things. In my various research for Recollections, I have often stumbled upon dressing cases and thought they would make a fun topic for a post. As I have just returned from one vacation and am starting to plan my next one (I’m headed back to Tombstone for [...]
About a month ago I covered the cute history of the tie-on pocket. Part of my research involved reading articles documenting the various items that 18th and 19th-century women would carry with them day-to-day. Items of a predictable nature included keys, money, and gloves. Not-so-predictable items on my list were pincushions and nutmeg graters. "Why [...]
One thing I love about my Recollections dresses is the deep pockets hidden in the pleats and folds. They are absolutely perfect for carrying my iPhone and lipstick. The pockets are one of the subtle modern conveniences that make Recollections so great. While they are great examples of 19th-century clothing, in truth, dresses from that [...]
Late Victorian architecture is the stuff that fairy tales are adorned with. It was a time of expanding wealth for the “common man” and homes reflect the desire that so many had to embrace and display their abundance. Exteriors were adorned from top to bottom with as many embellishments as possible. The famous “painted ladies” [...]