it's okay to decay.

Johannes Goropius Becanus, Opera Ioan, 1580

A metal heart decorated with small springs that unfolds to reveal paper covered with hand-written prayers in Italian and a small image of the Virgin Mary. Artemis Gallery

'Ariel on a bat's back' by Louis Rhead, c. 1918.

Will-o'-the-Wisp (Bludička), (Detail), (1888), by Lev Lerch (Czech, 1856 – 1892), oil on canvas, 243.5 × 135 cm (95.9 × 53.1 in), National Gallery Prague

HATRA A/W 2026 Sphere Sheer Robe

One of the most frightening monsters in the Jewish imagination is the shayd, a shapeshifting demon that assumes the form of a living person. It can transform every part of its body except for its feet, which always retain their original form: a chicken’s claws. The Talmud includes a story about the king of the shaydim (a mountain-dwelling demon named Ashmedai) impersonating the king of the Jews (a castle-dwelling lady-lover named Solomon). The sages of the Sanhedrin determined the impostor’s true identity by asking his queens what the king’s feet looked like when he visited the harem. Their ominous answer: “He never takes off his shoes.” Nearly 2,000 years later, some claimed that Hitler refused to remove a certain pair of boots, especially in his last years, proof that he might have been a shayd. The Talmud explains elsewhere that the shayd’s natural enemy is flour, since the most common way to find out if shaydim are on the haunt is to spread some near the disturbed area. If the marks of chicken feet appear overnight, it means that shaydim are afoot and you better hoof it.

Five Mummers, 1338-44 MS Bodl. 264.

'Spirit of the Night', detail, by John Atkinson Grimshaw, (1836 - 1893)

Probably the biggest and smallest adult wild striped skunk skulls I've cleaned. Sexual dimorphism is involved but not age difference, and most skunks are between these two extremes in size.

Élodie Antoine artist

Lady in Yellow by Max Nonnenbruch (1857-1922)

Le Vieillard et Les Nymphes, from Pierre Louÿs’ Les Chansons de Bilitis by Georges Barbier (1922)

Note that its considered more crass to point this out than it is to treat children as property in the first place.

Location: Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House), RAS, St. Petersburg.