A delicate offering

Photographs from Jesup North Pacific Expedition

Authors De Luxe

My friend Tonya has just sent me some pics of an intriguing, if incomprehensible card-game featuring famous authors (the likes of Walter Scott, Booth Tarkington, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, to name a few). We’d be intrigued to learn how this game was played. Perhaps it was an early essay at calibrating literary prizes?

Treasures from Portuguese Museums, I

Adelino Lyon de Castro, Sem Destino, 1953

(Museu do Chiado – MNAC. Photo: Luisa Oliveira)

Three portrait details from the St. Vincent Panels, attributed to Nuno Gonçalves, 1460s

(Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. Photos: José Pessoa)

The prophet Isaiah, somewhat entangled in scrip, from St. Matthew the Evangelist and the Prophet Isaiah, António Vaz, 1550s

(Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. Photo: José Pessoa)

A rather stunned-looking couple, as well they might be, from Hieronymous Bosch, The Temptation of St. Anthony, c.1505-1506

(Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. Photo: José Pessoa)

All images ©Instituto dos Museus e da Conservação, I.P. / Ministério da Cultura

Images taken from the rather excellent MatrizPix.

This joint is jumpin’

Page from a most unusual advertising booklet for Quaker Oats, 1898.

Professional instruction is available:

There is inspiration on hand:

…here, too:

…not to mention, here:

Yes, folks, it’s all happening, down at the Ole’ Internet Archive! Cast off your inhibitions, and get on down there.

Or else, I suppose the more enervated among you could always just go and look at the wisteria:

Japanese Lantern Slides From The E. Raymond Wilson Collection

Immortal longings

Cleopatra: …The stroke of death is as a Louers pinch, Which hurts, and is desir’d. Dost thou lye still? If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world, It is not worth leaue-taking.

Charmian: Dissolue thicke clowd, & Raine, that I may say The Gods themselues do weepe.

Guido Cagnacci, The Death of Cleopatra, 1658

Sorry, where was I…?

Roger Hiorns: Seizure, 2008

View of the Old Town, Stockholm,
(Swedish National Heritage Board)

~

the blue lacunae

They fell to Earth

Witold Pruskowski, Falling Star, 1884.

‘Willette’, illustration from Le Pierrot, N° 3, 20 July 1888. Via Livrenblog

Recognising that flying over London was contrary to the Royal Aero Club regulations, and yet wishing to get a view of London from above, Capt. Penfold, the Australian aeronaut, decided to make a trip across the metropolis in a balloon. To give a practical side to the trip he arranged with the Sandow Chocolate Co. to disguise himself as Father Christmas and descend at the first suitable point by parachute and distribute samples of Sandow’s chocolate on landing. Through Messrs. Aeros, Ltd., he secured the use of one of Messrs. Spencer Brothers’ balloons of 45,000 cubic feet capacity, which, piloted by Mr. Henry Spencer, and carrying a cinematograph operator, left the gasworks at Battersea at 12.45 p.m. on 23rd ult. Capt. Penfold was seated on the edge of the basket holding the cords of the parachute, which was fastened to the net of the balloon. A 25-mile wind was blowing, necessitating a good deal of manoeuvring before the word to “let go” was given, and after just clearing the gasometer they crossed the Thames at a height of 1,000 ft. At about 1,200 ft. up the only recognisable object was the spire of Westminster Cathedral. The balloon travelled at a height of some 4,000 ft. above the clouds for a long way, and then dropping down through the clouds, the aeronauts found clear country near Chelmsford. At 3,000 ft. Capt. Penfold slid off the basket. He dropped about 500 feet before the parachute opened and the wind swayed him about terrifically. While descending he travelled safely for a distance of about three miles across country and landed safely at Little Baddow, where he distributed the chocolate.

An unseasonal story from Flight magazine, January 4, 1913. The entire archive of this magazine, the first weekly magazine in the world devoted to aviation, starting in 1909, is now online.

Into the blue again

Nancy Wilson-Pajic, Meduse (hat by Christian Lacroix), cyanotype, 1998

 

Well wild wild whatever
in wild more silent blue

                the vase grips the stems
petals fall       the chrysanthemum darkens

                Sometimes this mustard feeling
clutches me also. 

 

Soon your writing is stained with the exotic longing of her lines…

The Architecture Of Dream. – Wendy Mulford on The Blue Stairs by Barbara Guest; Jacket, #10, October 1999.

Search for “blue” on The Poetry Search Engine

Turning Heads

Airship hangar at King’s Bay, Spitsbergen, 1926.
As used by the ill-fated Italia.

Set of sixty miniature heads used in phrenology, Manchester, England, 1831.
Science Museum, London.

University of Washington Digital Collections: Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

§

Before this boiler is thrown into focus its black cylinder is but an inconspicuous feature of the novel mechanism which stands face to face with the sun. But when, with a few turns of the crank, it swings into the concentrated rays reflected from hundreds of mirrors, it suddenly assumes the appearance of shining silver, or perhaps of a great, gleaming icicle, and becomes the irresistible cynosure of all eyes…

[link]

§

Ivory model of a human skull with moving parts, Europe, undated.
Science Museum, London.

Send in the clowns…

This collection of photographs, mainly of circuses and circus-acts, and housed at the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM), is simply astounding (go a couple of pages in to get to the circus images proper):

Gustave Soury (1884-1966) :
la passion du cirque et de la fête foraine

A footnote:

Louise Hervieu (1878-1954),
Tête de clown, ou La condition humaine.
Paris, musée national d’Art moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou