NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

Since it is such a feast, I have some ceramic olives for you too

Faience eggs, whole and cut, with orange yolks lie on a dish with a blue ornamental border.

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

Faience eggs of the 18th century, whole and cut, on a dish with a blue border

Are you fond of eggs? And of faience ones? The eighteenth century: a love for all seasons

NB! · Art · People

Portrait of Doctor de S. Playing Chess with Death

Portrait of Doctor de S. playing chess with Death. The doctor points to a winning position of the pieces, and Death concedes defeat. But in the year the picture was painted its author was beheaded, and Death won after all

NB! · Science · Mores · Humour

In the seventeenth century, dissection tables with a rotating top became especially popular: they allowed the corpse to be turned towards the sun, a great advantage in the absence of good lighting

A marble bust on a cushion beside a reconstructed head held by hands in blue gloves.

NB! · Archaeology · Museums · Science · People

Leiden Museum of Antiquities Reconstructs Julius Caesar's Face from a Bust Found in Turin

The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden has made a 3D model of Julius Caesar's head from the bust found in Turin. The deformed right side of the skull supports the hypothesis of a birth injury

Illustration of a hunched old woman with a cane and a bundle walking through snow past a Japanese house during a snowfall.

NB! · Faith · The East · Ethnography

The yokai Amazake Baba, who knocks on doors in winter, and how to ward her off

Among the Japanese supernatural creatures, the yokai, there is an old woman called Amazake Baba, who knocks at doors in winter and calls out to the householders; whoever answers will fall mortally ill. The old crone can be frightened off with a cedar branch

NB! · Art · Society · People · Humour

Sir William Young owned West Indian estates and 1,300 slaves, was an outspoken opponent of Wilberforce's 1789 campaign for abolition, and in the end richly deserved his drubbing

Painting of a preacher in a pulpit, a clerk with clasped hands below, and a sleeping woman in a red dress.

NB! · Faith · Art · Observations · Humour

Hogarth's “The Sleeping Congregation” of 1728, with a preacher resembling Desaguliers

The Sleeping Congregation, 1728. Hogarth. It is very Hogarthian that the man in the pulpit looks like the celebrated natural philosopher, propagandist of Newtonian theories and freemason John Theophilus Desaguliers. And the flock is asleep

A family in a cart drawn by a white horse on a park road, with a black dog beneath the cart and a small dog in the distance.

NB! · Art · Humour

Family outing with dogs in a 1908 painting by Henri Rousseau

If you are going on holiday with the whole family, don't forget to bring your beloved little dog and her puppy. Henri Rousseau, 1908

NB! · Art · Observations

Portable boxes, no bigger than a matchbox

Portable boxes, no bigger than a matchbox. Silver, early nineteenth century. You may call them cocaine boxes, but I keep jewellery in them

A small pale figurine of Baubo with a tuft of hair on its head stands on a wooden shelf against a dark background.

NB! · Archaeology · Museums · Observations · Humour

Figurine of the ancient Greek Baubo in Freud's study

The aged ancient Greek libertine Baubo in Freud's consulting room. Nicely settled in

Two terracotta figurines of Baubo on white stands in a museum display, the left one wearing a headdress, the right one with a large top piece.

NB! · Archaeology · Faith · Ethnography · Humour

Terracotta figurines of Baubo, who made the grieving Demeter laugh

Figurines of Baubo, the old woman who made the goddess Demeter laugh in her grief for her daughter by lifting her skirts and displaying her nether parts. There were Baubos in the old days!