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German artist Evelyn Bracklow’s porcelain cups, saucers, teapots and dinner service is covered in ants. On some she’s painted a piece of food and then had her hand-painted black ants congregate around it. The effect is fascinating stuff and unsettling. We know that ants exist in abundance, but we don’t want to encounter one on … Continue reading "Painted Ants Scurry Over Vintage Porcelain by Evelyn Bracklow" The post Painted Ants Scurry Over Vintage Porcelain by Evelyn Bracklow appeared first on Flashbak.
In 2020, David Gallagher, who runs SF Memory, opened a cabinet found abandoned in San Francisco’s Mission District, somewhere around Tiffany and Duncan streets. Inside were 920 Kodachrome slides by a then unknown photographer capturing life in the city throughout the 1960s. They show us the construction of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) … Continue reading "The Mystery Remains: Found Kodachrome Photos From 1960s San Francisco" The post The Mystery Remains: Found Kodachrome Photos From 1960s San Francisco appeared first on Flashbak.
Flowers speak a language we understand. They tell us of time and its passing. They speak of life and death, enduring, waiting and survival. They speak of hope and renewal. “To be a flower,” Emily Dickinson wrote in Bloom, a poem, “is profound Responsibility”. We’re thinking of flowers as we look at this album from … Continue reading "The Life of Flowers In Vintage Found Photographs" The post The Life of Flowers In Vintage Found Photographs appeared first on Flashbak.
In 1994, the graffiti on the wall that ran along the Riverside Path in London’s Thamesmead told everyone that “GOLDFISH ARE WANKERS”. We’ve seen “LESBIAN TURDS“, learned that “Cats like plain Crisps” and that you can “FREE KUWAIT WITH TIGER TOKENS“, but this is the first fish-themed graffiti we’ve seen. Peter Marshall captured London … Continue reading "‘Goldfish Are Wankers’: London Graffiti, 1984-1994" The post ‘Goldfish Are Wankers’: London Graffiti, 1984-1994 appeared first on Flashbak.
The images below are from Columbia University’s collection of commercial stationery, featuring architectural illustrations and gorgeous typography for factories, warehouses, mines, offices, stores, banks and hotels. Industries in this album of architectural stationery vignettes range from livestock, textiles, printing, roofing, and brewing to wagon works, cordage and merchandising. Columbia’s Robert Biggert Collection of printed … Continue reading "Vintage Architectural Stationery Vignettes" The post Vintage Architectural Stationery Vignettes appeared first on Flashbak.
More in history
Fireside this week! I am still a bit behind after attending the annual meeting of the Society for Military History – conferences always leave me a bit tired and slow to get back to writing, even as they also stimulate my thinking – so the conclusion of our look at Rings of Power must wait … Continue reading Fireside Friday, April 4, 2025 →
Prada, Alfa Romeo, Pellegrino, Ferrari, Illy, Lamborghini, Gucci: these are a few Italian corporations we all know, though we don’t necessarily know that they’re all from the north of Italy. The same is true, in fact, of most Italian brands that now enjoy global recognition, and according to the analysis presented in the RealLifeLore video […]
A nice treat today as Caroline goes to the Moon! This was a popular French fictional series but I had not been able to find the one about the Moon trip until recently. The illustrations are beautiful and full color. Well worth examining each one for its details. Pierre Probst (1913-2007 ) introduced Caroline and her feisty animal friends to the French public in 1952, and added to the series for a decade. He created Caroline, based on his tomboyish daughter Simone. The illustrations are charming, full color, and with wonderful two-page spreads with great comic details. Caroline' is about seven years old, and has blonde hair with pigtails. She lives by herself among a band of friends - the dogs Bobby and Rusty, the cats Puff and Inky, the bear Bruno, a lion and a panther. Pierre Probst's greatest gift was for showing the human emotions on the faces of Caroline's animal friends, and his real daughter Simone can remember her father drawing from a mirror as he himself performed the grimaces and guffaws that he wanted to convey. Enjoy the adventure. (Sorry that some of the spreads get edges cut off.) Probst, Pierre. Caroline Sur La Lune (Caroline on the Moon). Paris: Grands Albums Hachette. (30 p.) 1965. I like Caroline's and her animal friends' faces as they undergo extra "G's" A really nice detailed illustration of approaching the Moon. I enjoy "fighting off" the meteors with tennis rackets.
An ongoing excavation at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii yielded an unusual pair of marble funerary statues. The figures depict a man in a toga and a bejeweled woman, who experts believe may have been a Pompeiian priestess. Statues Found at Pompeii’s Porta Sarno Necropolis Archaeologists unearthed the pair of relief […]
