Aristocracy · Archive · Books · Mores

A week of dinners and evenings in the notes of Princess Varvara Turkestanova

"On Monday I dine at home on a small quantity of soup, a cutlet, eggs and a little glass of port; then I spend nearly the whole day writing; in the evening, that is at 9 o'clock, I go to Princess Boris. Nothing is yet decided as

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Mores

Presumed design for a mirror commissioned by Alexander I from the jeweller Odiot

"A Dressing Table, Comprising a Gilt Mirror Whose Crown Is the Toilette of Venus" This is believed to be a design for the decorative part of a precious mirror commissioned from the French goldsmith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot by Tsar Alexander I himself for his mistress between 1815

Archive · The East · Geography · People

Parisian traveller Hugues Krafft photographed Egypt in March 1887

Photographs from a journey to Egypt, 13 to 27 March 1887. The photographs are by Hugues Krafft, a wealthy Parisian bourgeois of German origin who inherited an enormous fortune on his father's death, which allowed him to devote his life to the arts and to travel. He wandered

NB! · Archive · Mores · Ethnography

The Women of Mezen, Arkhangelsk Governorate, in the 1900s

NB! · Archive · Faith · Moscow · People

Tikhon, the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia since the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917, at the Easter moleben by the Nikolsky Gate, 5 May 1918

Archive · Faith

Easter greeting in the Near Caves and the reply of the departed saints

A Paschal Miracle Is Entered in the Chronicle of the Kyiv Caves Lavra under the Year 1463. “One of the brethren” entered the Near Caves, where the bodies of the departed saints lie at rest, and cried out: “Holy fathers and brethren, today is a great day for us: Christ

NB! · Archive · Art · Ethnography

Pattern for Embroidering a Griffin, 1589

Oval engraving with profiles of Alexander I, Paul I and Catherine II, Berlin, 1814.

Archive · Books · Monarchies

A book on how Europe turned its gaze to Russia during Napoleon's threat

A triple portrait of Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander I from the German book of 1815, "The Glorious Self-Sacrifice of Russia for the Salvation of Mankind" The book tells how all Europe turned its gaze northwards at the moment of greatest peril from Napoleon to every

Archive · Books · Mores · People

Tolkien's love for Edith from 1906 and the story of Beren and Luthien in “The Silmarillion”

In 1972, shortly after his wife's death, Tolkien wrote that he had never called her Lúthien, but that she was the source of the story at the heart of The Silmarillion. Ronald met Edith in 1906 and fell in love, but the orphaned Tolkien's guardian opposed

Archive · Art · Museums · Humour

“Two Hermeses”: guide Nikolaos Zafeiropoulos beside the statue of Hermes in an Athens museum, 1935

Hermes in Marble and Hermes in the Flesh. In 1935 the photojournalist Vasilios Tsakirakis took a photograph of a stranger in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The man, who turned out to be a guide named Nikolaos Zafeiropoulos, proved to be uncannily like the statue of Hermes, a copy

Archive · Mores · Society

Sunday became the seventh day of the week in the USSR by decree of 26 June 1940

The calendars of 1928 and 1945. Spot the difference? Until 1940, in the USSR, as in many countries of the world, the first day of the week was the day of rest, Sunday. The Russian word for week, nedelya, originally meant Sunday, and the days that followed were named according

Old pen drawing of three hooded figures with covered faces beside woven beehives, with a person sitting in a tree.

NB! · Archive · Mores · Humour

Medieval beekeepers' costumes and their kinship with modern fashion

The costumes of medieval beekeepers were well ahead of their time. Today, they are the very height of fashion