Observations · Mores

English bathing machines for women and their spread across Europe in the 19th century

Bathing machines are naturally an invention of the English. At the end of the eighteenth century, the champions of piety devised this way for women to enjoy the sea without loss of dignity or visible propriety. By the middle of the nineteenth century, in the heyday of Victorianism, machines for

Art · Observations · People

James Ensor, the Belgian painter, and his early 1876 work “The Bathing Machine”

Good Old Traditions of Self-Isolation. Today is the birthday of the celebrated Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949), remembered chiefly for canvases of grotesque figures, skeletons playing the part of living people, and masks. But what came to my mind was his lonely bathing machine of 1876. This early

Black-and-white photograph of a woman with short dark hair seated with a glass in her hand, with two people in wicker chairs behind her.

NB! · Archive · Observations · Pop Culture

Maria Callas and Winston Churchill in one photograph in a relaxed setting

A unique shot: Maria Callas, with Winston Churchill behind her. Who would have imagined the two of them in one place, and in such a relaxed setting at that

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This Is the Best

NB! · Observations · Humour

The Phystech lot are joking, and I honestly cannot say which of these returns I am awaiting more

Faith · Heritage · Paris

Today is Good Friday for Catholics, the day on which the crucifixion of Jesus is recalled, which means that in Paris one of the greatest Christian relics is venerated: the Crown of Thorns of Christ, kept since 1806 in the treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris,

Today is Good Friday for Catholics, the day on which the crucifixion of Jesus is recalled, which means that in Paris one of the greatest Christian relics is venerated: the Crown of Thorns of Christ, kept since 1806 in the treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris, and which reached France

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Heritage · Paris

The Vendôme Column before and after its destruction

Archive · Society · Paris

Boston Athenaeum publishes photographs of the 1871 Paris Commune

The Boston Athenæum has put online a collection of photographs of the Paris Commune and the fortified suburbs of Paris in 1871, as the Franco-Prussian War drew to a close. Cannon in the city, the ruined Ministry of Finance, executions in the streets, and barricades that look nothing like

Painting by Jean Dufy of the Place de la Concorde in Paris with the obelisk and fountains, the Seine with a steamboat and Sacré-Cœur in the distance.

NB! · Art · Observations · Paris

Place de la Concorde in 1950s Paris in a painting by Jean Dufy

I do so long to be in the incredible Paris of the fifties of Jean Dufy. Place de la Concorde. I wish everyone such a Chagallian-Dufyesque mood

Poster urging “Stay at home!”: a masked medic looks upward, people stand on balconies, and the slogan reads “Resistir es vencer”.

NB! · Archive · Art · Society

Spanish illustrators created coronavirus posters in the spirit of Civil War graphic art

Posters on the fight against coronavirus by contemporary Spanish illustrators, inspired by the graphic legacy of the Civil War. Viva la sanidad publica!

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A Reminder

Monarchies · Society · People · Humour

Prince Carl Philip of Sweden and the 1979 law on absolute primogeniture

While Europe is in quarantine, His Royal Highness Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, aged forty, is on manoeuvres. Sweden has not introduced a quarantine, although against the background of the other Scandinavian countries the situation does not look entirely cloudless. Let me clarify at once: Carl Philip is married to

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