In the Press · Faith · The East · Cinema
With my co-host and fellow Orientalist Lesha Strizhov, we discuss how the plot of the series is connected with the history of Thailand. What do the heroes of "The White Lotus" have in common with the heroes of Eastern epic? What mythological and religious parallels can be
Archive · Monarchies · Moscow
Ivan the Terrible receives the Danish ambassadors together with his eldest son. Before the audience, the bailiffs strictly forbade the ambassadors to recite the titles of their king ahead of the titles of the Prince of Moscow, reminding them that envoys who had once broken this rule had been expelled
London · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Humour
A Footnote on the Popular Anecdote of Yury Gagarin, the Queen and the Slice of Lemon. It probably could indeed have happened, but the man drinking tea was not Gagarin at all. It was Captain-Lieutenant Vetoshkin, who fished out a piece of lemon with his fingers and ate the
Faith · Art
Samson destroys the pagan temple in which the Philistines are celebrating their victory over him. And the reader comes at last to understand that the hero's extraordinary strength lay not in his hair, but in his obedience to God. Engraving by Gustave Doré, 1866
Architecture · Art · Observations
Our Milan walk continues. The magnificent interior in the photographs is the decor of one of the apartments of the designer Alberta Ferretti, used as a working space and closed to visitors on ordinary days. For Design Week, however, the celebrated studio Artemest furnished this remarkable space, and it was
Art · London · Museums · Observations
Titian, Allegory of Prudence. The painting is customarily read as a depiction of the three ages of man and the three tenses: past, present and future, a token of the prudence that comes with the years. But who, in that case, are the dog, the lion and the wolf meant
NB! · Art · Museums
Archive · Monarchies · Society · People
Sire, give freedom to the Russian word. Our intellect is cramped, our thought poisons our breast for want of space, it groans in the stocks of the censorship. Give us free speech... we have something to say to the world and to our own people. < > Wash from Russia
NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Nature
Futuristic beehives from an eighteenth-century book. Whenever I look at pictures like these, I have the feeling that some two hundred and fifty years ago humanity took a wrong turning somewhere, and I look at pictures like these constantly
NB! · Faith · Art · Observations · Humour
NB! · Observations
Art · Observations · Nature · Humour
I came across an account by the artist Maria Katkova of how she once made several works using mushroom ink. What is that, you ask? The artist explains the recipe: if you pick an ink cap (a dung-loving one, to be precise), place it on a saucer and watch,