Almaty · Archive · Architecture
A view of the New Square in Alma-Ata: now from the south-east, then from the south-west. Today a park stands where the vast empty space once lay. The granite tribunes, imitating the mausoleum in Moscow, appeared before the building of the Central Committee, which was not supposed
NB! · Archive
Almaty · Archive · Architecture
Before the riots and after. This is how the building of the Communist Party Central Committee, later the Presidential Palace and now the akimat of Almaty, looks inside. The circular assembly hall seats 600. The palace itself consists of 5 separate buildings. When it was being built, it went through
Archive · Books · Education · People
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien became a professor at Oxford at 30, and this is what the academic dress of a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) of the University of Oxford looks like: a scarlet gown with bell-shaped sleeves of grey silk. Tolkien received this honorary degree in 1972, a year
Archive · Cinema · Observations · Nature
Saw this tree and was reminded of Sofia Coppola's 1999 film "The Virgin Suicides". If you haven't seen it, consider it a recommendation for the holidays. The photograph shows the pruning of a tree at the end of the nineteenth century. This is no
Archive · Art · Observations · Mores · Paris · Humour
La vie parisienne 1919. These days this influencer would be holding a bouquet of fir branches and a little glass of champagne with a plastic lid, and as for the clothes, the look is perfectly contemporary. Though sitting on a table is a sin, of course: it is no accident
NB! · Archive · Art · Observations · Mores · Humour
Louis XII's valet de chambre Pierre Sala gives his heart to a daisy in token of his love for Marguerite Buillou. One wonders how he survived such an operation at all.
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Observations · Humour
Two letters written in the hand of Queen Elizabeth I of England. We shall not discuss their contents; the question is how this young lady's handwriting changed in just 10 years, growing airier with age, but less legible. My own handwriting is also forever changing, but, unlike Elizabeth&
Archive · Science · People
This is what one of the first X-ray images looks like, taken on 23 January 1896. Contrary to a misconception widespread on the internet, it is not a picture of the right hand of the wife of Wilhelm Röntgen, discoverer of the mysterious X-rays. It is a picture
Archive · Art · Observations · People
What do you make of these portraits? Little girls with improbably large butterflies. What is that, by the way, an Atlas moth? Such is the work of Joshua Johnson, the first successful Black American portraitist. Well, successful, and Black... Until the 1990s the identity of the author of at least
Archive · Mores · Humour
If Death appears in the sky in a shroud, with a coffin under his arm, expect overcast skies. If the Pope, the king, the cardinals and the gentlemen are all in the jaws of a beast, expect heat. If, at the same time, there are also traffic jams of 9
Archive · Books · Mores · Humour
If we are to believe L.J. Clairian's "Researches and Medical Considerations on Men's Clothing" of 1803, this is what proper men's underwear ought to look like. Many authors would later cite his assertion on the harm of overly tight pantaloons, and