þis læne lif

While we’re on the subject of animals the artist absolutely would have been familiar with, please enjoy this cat.

ancient minoan: just kidding, cephalopod time

~ Glazed Brick with Bird Man.

Culture: Assyrian

Place of origin: Mesopotamia

Date: ca. 900-650 B.C.

I’m not even going to bother doing a guessing game for this wonderful image, since it’s so obviously a squid. I mean, fish with arms, what else could it be?

Galdrakver (‘Little Book Of Magic’) The ‘Little Book Of Magic’ is a seventeenth-century Icelandic manuscript, written on animal skin and containing magical staves, sigils, prayers, charms and related texts.

“Certainely there are yet many things left to discovery, and it cannot be any inconvenience for us, to maintaine a new truth or rectifie and ancient errour.”

Wilkins may have been wrong about the possibility of life on the moon, but he was definitely on to something. 

A Jacobean clergyman, founder of the Royal Society, and brother-in-law to Oliver Cromwell, Wilkins’s writings not only helped to bring the science of astronomy to the general public, he also arguably started the space race. 

Ms. Codex 860 - [Collection of documents concerning inheritance] 

This manuscript contains some copies of the will of Domina Georgeta, daughter of Marco Centurioni and widow of Jeronimo Cattanei, and legal proceedings about the inheritance, involving primarily her grandson Silvester Cattanei and Isoltina, his brother Jeronimo’s widow, dated 1548-1549, notarized by various officials of Genoa, with some earlier documents interspersed. It was written in  Genoa, between 1536 and 1549 CE.  Why this manuscript? Because it can tell us so much about the history of Genoa, about life in the 16th century, about family relationships. Sometimes manuscripts are not inherently beautiful, but they do still deserve attention and care!

LJS 451 - [Commentary on the Doctrinale puerorum]

This is an anonymous commentary on a 12th-century didactic poem composed by the French Franciscan Alexander de Villa Dei addressing parts of speech, syntax, and rhetorical figures. It also features the opening of a letter by Albert II, Duke of Austria, Styria, and Carinthia, transcribed in German by a later hand on the last verso. The manuscript was possibly written in France, between 1279 and 1299 CE. 

tbh “the Victorians did not go to the trouble of inventing aniline dyes so that we could wear neutrals” mostly covers it?

let’s not forget the tacky patterns, too

oh yeah

oh fuck yeah

also

PUMPKIN WORTH

I have seen mid-century dresses in electric blue.  Barbie pink

Black with photo-realistic brocade oranges.  Royal purple with GIANT POLKA DOTS.

Hey hey did you know lime green and lavender was a favorite color combo in 1895?

This one is not so much tacky as…vibrant

Okay at ~1903 it’s not really Victorian but I love the melting ice cream explosion look of it

This dress has faded but it would have originally been a quite eye-catching shade of violet.

Not that past eras were any less fond of colors even if they weren’t artificial dyes.  I’ve seen canary yellow Regency dresses and an 18th century man’s coat in turquoise velvet printed with leopard spots.  Steampunk isn’t really Victorian so much as it is ‘drapery store vomited on a sexy colorblind school marm’

Et le piece de resistance…