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

NB! · The East · Geography · Observations · Paris

A marker in the paving near the Luxor Obelisk in Paris, pointing the way to Thebes, whence the obelisk was brought in the 1830s

A sheet with a quotation from Ambrose of Optina about talking in church, taped to a wooden door.

NB! · Faith · Moscow · Observations · Humour

Notice with Ambrose of Optina's instruction on silence in church on the door of a Moscow church

Nota bene on the doors of a Moscow church. Words of the saints, for the attention of those fond of a chat within the walls of the church

Light enters through the f-holes of a cello and casts curved patches on the inside of the body, with the sound post at the centre.

Architecture · Art · Observations

Interior of a Cello in a Photograph by Charles Brooks

Inside a cello. Charles Brooks. Hands up, all those who would like a house that looks like this on the inside. Perfection, if you ask me.

NB! · Archaeology · Cinema · Observations · Humour

Thanks to John Richardson (1934-2011) and Raquel Welch (1940-2023), who died yesterday at the age of 83, and to their appearance in the 1967 film One Million Years B.C., primitive people will remain in my imagination for ever with impeccable…

NB! · Art · Observations · Paris

I adore this horse from Édouard Manet's Races in the Bois de Boulogne, 1872

NB! · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

Of the true world of ideas, people can judge only by the dim shadows their telephones cast on the wall of the cave

A girl in a white dress and veil kneels at an altar holding a book, beside a man in a dark coat and an altar boy.

Art · Observations · People

A painting Pablo Picasso made at fifteen and the later change in his style

Can you believe that this painting was made by Pablo Picasso? And yet it is so. The artist was then 15 years old. One wonders what must have happened for Picasso's style to undergo such a significant change

NB! · Faith · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

American Curial Cardinal Raymond Burke Has Definitely Won the Battle of Images with Rihanna

Faith · Observations · People · Rome

The Bishop of Rome renounces the See of Saint Peter as of 28 February 2013

On the morning of 11 February 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced his forthcoming voluntary abdication from the papal throne. "...in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of

NB! · Observations · Society Pages · Humour

When you wear your very best to the occasion, come what may

Architecture · Observations · Heritage

The Appalling "Restoration" of One of the Oldest Dwellings in France

The appalling "restoration" of one of the oldest dwellings in France. During the pandemic, the owners of the world-famous House of Jeanne in the small town of Séverac-le-Château in the south of France carried out repairs. After the house, a contemporary of the Crusades, became