Archive · Monarchies · Moscow · Society
The administering of the oath will continue from the 20th day of December, to persons of the male sex of every rank and station, other than state peasants and the serf peasants and servants of landowners, for which purpose all churches will be open after the Liturgy From the collection
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Observations · Mores
Prince Edward, the future Duke of Kent, and Princess Alexandra play with inflatable toys on the grass under the supervision of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, at their residence, Coppins, in Buckinghamshire, in October 1940. I have never before seen inflatable figures used for play away from the water
Archive · Cinema · Books · Observations
Я узнал, что у меня Есть огромная семья: И тропинка, и лесок, В поле – каждый колосок! Речка, небо голубое – Это все мое, родное. Это Родина моя! Всех люблю на свете я! Literal translation I learned that I have A huge family: The path and the little wood, And in the
Aristocracy · Archive · Art · Moscow · Museums
Silhouettes of the Nyryshkin family at an exhibition on the Decembrists. Moscow, 1850. Most remarkable of all, every sitter is identified by name: Anastasia Yakovlevna, Evdokia Mikhailovna, the Abbess Maria, Varvara Alexandrovna, Rachel; in the middle row, Nikolai Alexandrovich, Yakov Alexandrovich, Annette, Kirill Alexandrovich, Mikhail Alexandrovich; in the bottom row,
Archive · Books · Monarchies · Science · Saint Petersburg
One of the earliest depictions of the Russian tricolour appears in a Dutch book on shipbuilding and flags of the late seventeenth century, where it is captioned as the Flag of His Tsarist Majesty of Muscovy. The book, «The New Dutch Shipbuilding», which contains essential information on the building of
Archive · Art · Museums · Observations
Of the scanty listings of events devoted to the Decembrists, one made a good impression: the exhibition "In the Depths of the Siberian Mines. The Decembrists. 200 Years of History" at the In artibus foundation. The display brings together exhibits from six state collections, chiefly watercolours with portraits
NB! · Archive · Art · Pop Culture
NB! · Archive · Cinema · Moscow · Education
In this photograph from the early 1960s: students of the Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio. In the front row Vera Alentova is easy to recognise; in the back row one can make out Andrey Myagkov, along with Vsevolod Abdulov, Gemma Osmolovskaya, Yelena Odintsova and Rogvold Sukhoverko
NB! · Archive · Cinema · People
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Faith · The East · Books
The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, from Conrad Grünenberg's "Description of a Journey from Constance to Jerusalem" (c. 1487). Baden State Library, Karlsruhe
NB! · Archive · Faith · Mores · Society
In 1951 a group of Catholic activists hanged, and then burned, a wooden effigy of Santa Claus before several hundred children, in protest at the paganisation and commercialisation of the Nativity of Christ. The action was a one-off and, as we can see 75 years on, did not achieve
Archive · Cinema · Observations
Unbelievably, the maddest part of Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky, the costumes of the Teutonic knights, actually reproduces historical reality quite accurately. At least if we are to believe the illustrations in medieval codices, for example the German Codex Manesse (2, 3) of around 1300 and the Zurich Armorial