Archive · The East · Art · Society

Iranian Second World War posters showing Hitler as Zahhak from the “Shahnameh”

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt transport a vanquished Hitler, snakes sprouting from his shoulders, following Kaveh, the mythical blacksmith who raised a revolt against the tyrant Zahhak. Goebbels is tied to the horse's tail. During the Second World War a series of propaganda posters appeared in Iran, based on

NB! · Archive · Observations · Society

List of Russian Subjects Who Perished in the Sinking of the Titanic Published

Old engraving of a Prussian eagle pecking a bearded man chained to a printing press, with figures lying at his feet.

NB! · Archive · In the Press · Art · Society

Caricature of the 1843 Closure of Karl Marx's Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne

The Prussian eagle pecks at the liver of Karl Marx, chained to a printing press like Prometheus to his rock. The caricature was timed to coincide with the closure in 1843 of the Cologne Rheinische Zeitung, edited by Marx

Archive · Books · People

Five Russian titles of a novel about an underwater voyage, published between 1870 and 1956

George Sand suggested the idea of the novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" to Jules Verne, proposing in a letter of 1865 that he write a book about a voyage across the ocean in a submarine. In Russian translation the novel appeared under various titles: Eighty Thousand

Archive · Architecture · Art · Museums

Carlo Scarpa's design for the 1953 exhibition of the Sicilian Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina entered the golden fund of exhibition architecture

Carlo Scarpa's design for the 1953 exhibition of the Sicilian Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina entered the golden fund of exhibition architecture. Scarpa draped the rooms of the Palazzo Zanca in multicoloured cotton cloths, concealing walls, floors and every scrap of decoration, and leaving only niches for the

NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Art · London · Monarchies

Prince Charles and Princess Anne through the lens of Antony Armstrong-Jones, their future uncle, the Earl of Snowdon

Coming Up · Archive · Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg

The Leporskaya Archive, transferred to the Russian Museum in 2017, is on show until 15 May

The Russian Museum shows the third exhibition devoted to the Leporskaya archive in the Mikhailovsky Castle. The Leporskaya archive is one of the most significant collections relating to the post-revolutionary history of the Russian avant-garde, the circle of Kazimir Malevich and the work of the leading pupils of

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Humour

The New European Barber's Shop, or the Shaving of Napoleon by the Allies after the Battle of Leipzig

The greatest pleasure is to contemplate Emperor Alexander's smile, with the plate of 1812, which shows, as nothing else could, his disposition for the negotiations in Vienna. The chin: Holland; the towel: Milan, Kulm, Leipzig; the razor: London 1813; the shaving bowl: 1812.

Aerial view of a medieval castle: stone walls with round towers, a Gothic chapel, a keep on a mound, a small town outside the walls and a river at left.

NB! · Archive

Reconstruction of a medieval castle with stone walls and towers beside a river

Page of an old bound manuscript with an ink drawing of a human figure with a large head and handwritten notes in the margins.

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Paris · People

Drawing kept by a court physician later bound into the journal of King Louis XIII

A self-portrait of Louis XIII, drawn by the Dauphin of France at the age of 6! The drawing was preserved by the court physician. The sheet was later bound into the journal of Louis XIII's activities as king.

Archive · Art · People

Sculptor Nemon persuaded Freud to sit for him in Vienna and London

Oscar Nemon at Work on His Sculpted Portraits of Sigmund Freud. In 1920, when Nemon was a very young sculptor and an entranced admirer of the celebrated psychologist's work, he approached Freud through one of his pupils with a request to be allowed to model him, but Freud

Colour plate showing a lady's bedroom in Art Nouveau style with a canopied bed, a fireplace with a mirror, a chest of drawers and a patterned carpet.

NB! · Archive · Art · Observations · Mores

French Art Nouveau lady's bedroom interior and curtains resembling Soviet ones

Looking through sketches of French Art Nouveau interiors, I came upon some curious curtains that might easily have belonged to an old Soviet interior. At any rate, I keep at home valances and throws from the early twentieth century with almost exactly the same pattern