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NB! · Faith · Monarchies · People · Humour
Icon of Saint Charles I the Martyr, executed as a tyrant and traitor
Saint Charles the Martyr, executed as a tyrant, traitor and enemy of his country. Do pass this on to Poklonskaya, in case things don't work out for her with Nicholas II
NB! · Monarchies · Museums · Heritage · Paris
A collection of unique diamonds belonging to the Sun King, lost in the nineteenth century, recreated for the first time as full-size models and on show in Paris at L'Ecole Van Cleef
A collection of unique diamonds belonging to the Sun King, lost in the nineteenth century, has been recreated for the first time as full-size models and is on show in Paris at L'Ecole Van Cleef. The blue stone is called the Hope
NB! · Archive · The East · Art · Monarchies · People
The diamonds bought in 1668 by Louis XIV from the traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, drawn by Abraham Bosse
NB! · Aristocracy · Monarchies · Museums · Mores
This spinning wheel was presented to Queen Victoria in 1866 by her close friend and longtime Mistress of the Robes, the Scottish aristocrat Anne Murray, Duchess of Atholl, by then a widow herself
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Mores · Ethnography
The photograph of Victoria at the spinning wheel is in fact a very telling one: for a long time the English word "spinster" meant both a woman who spun and an old maid, and the image of a woman at her spinning stood for an unfortunate private life
NB! · Monarchies · Observations
and "former queen" sounds offensive
NB! · Art · Mores · Humour
How exalted young ladies from well-to-do families present themselves vs how they look in reality.
NB! · Observations · Humour
The moment when one regrets that turbans went out of fashion
NB! · Art · London · Mores · People
The celebrated English courtesan and actress Nell Gwyn, her bosom bared, strokes a lamb on the head: in 1670 this was a thoroughly fashionable subject for a portrait
NB! · Archive · London · Mores · Humour
Cartoon “The Great Social Evil” and the meaning of the word gay in 19th-century England
Ah, Fanny! How long have you been gay? In nineteenth-century England the word "gay" was used of those working in the sex trade. In the background is a poster for La Traviata, an opera about a courtesan, for the especially slow on the uptake
NB! · Aristocracy · Art · Cinema · Pop Culture · Humour
Mr Bean in William Hogarth's "The Toilette" of 1743
Mr Bean in William Hogarth's "The Toilette" of 1743. The acknowledged master of irony at the expense of the English aristocracy could hardly have imagined that his picture would still be raising a laugh more than 200 years later