NB! · Art · Mores · Humour
A Crinoline Mishap
A crinoline mishap. Poor girl, one longs to offer her a hand. But the fellow, instead of helping, has raised a finger and stands there looking gleeful.
Alexandr Radayev
Art · Nature
Child with hunting dogs in a joint painting by Jan Fyt and Erasmus Quellinus the Younger
A very serious little boy with hunting dogs and a bird of prey. A collaborative painting by the Antwerp animal painter Jan Fyt (1609-1661) and Erasmus Quellinus the Younger (1607-1678). Such joint works were not uncommon among the Flemish, especially for Fyt. The principle was simple: to achieve
NB! · In the Press · Books · Pop Culture · Humour
News from the World of Books
News from the world of books. Nastya Ivleeva and the Parnassian Mockingbird 🥰
Archive · Books · Observations · Mores
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam has a recollection of how she and her husband chanced upon namesakes in a watchmaker's workshop in Yalta
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam has a recollection of how she and her husband chanced upon namesakes in a watchmaker's workshop in Yalta. While writing out a receipt, the watchmaker was stunned to hear his own surname from his customers. He invited the Mandelstams to his home and told them
NB! · Museums · Observations
When One Is Delighted by Museums That Actually Work
Architecture · Heritage · Society · Paris · Nature
One thousand trees from French forests for the spire and transept of Notre-Dame
The original roof of Notre-Dame, a masterpiece of engineering, was built in the twelfth century from 13,000 oaks, which is why it was called la forêt (the forest), while the spire was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. After Macron announced that traditional techniques and materials had been chosen
Architecture · Heritage · Paris · Nature
Eight oaks from the Bercé forest blessed for the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris
In France, 200-year-old oaks that are to be felled for the reconstruction of the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris have been blessed. For the restoration of the 96-metre spire, enormous oaks have been chosen, fifty metres tall, with trunks more than a metre in diameter, from
NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · London · Monarchies
In honour of Mother's Day, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall has published this photograph of 1990 with her mother, the 70-year-old Hon. Rosalind Shand, née Cubitt, of the youthful baronial house of Ashcombe, created in 1892 for…
Faith · Monarchies · Mores
Mothering Sunday in England and Lent in the Church of England
For the Orthodox, Lent begins tomorrow, but in the Church of England this year 14 March already falls in the middle of Lent, traditionally observed as Mothering Sunday. Mothering Sunday has been identified with the fourth Sunday of Lent in England since the seventeenth century; before that, the maternal feast
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Faith
Greek priest before the Parthenon in a photograph by Kees Scherer, mid-1960s
A Greek Orthodox priest before the Parthenon in Athens. Photograph by the Dutch photographer Kees Scherer, mid-1960s
NB!
Helmet with leopard skin and white plume in a museum display case
Art · Monarchies · Observations
Portrait of Louis Bonaparte by Charles Jalabert and the helmets of French dragoons
Napoleon's younger brother, Louis Bonaparte, in the uniform of a colonel of the 5th Dragoons. Portrait by Charles Jalabert. In the French army, the helmets of dragoon officers were adorned with a turban of leopard skin. I cannot say whether this alludes to the leopard skin fastened to