Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration

Emma Cons's temperance 'Coffee Tavern' in Seven Dials, opened in the 1870s, was called The Cat and Comfort.

Zoo's Jazz Snake

Common Green Magpie (Cissa chinensis) in Sikkim, India by Yatin Desai.

Postmen in the snow, New York in 1952 by Saul Leiter.

London Zoo are doing their annual stock take and it is a thing of joy (pics from Getty Images) www.gettyimages.co.uk/editorial-im...

Some of Glasgow's surviving Victorian railinga are little works of art. This is a particularly eye-catching design from the West End of the city. #glasgow #railings #architecture #architecturephotography

just when people thought WWI could get no worse (1914)

A Covent Garden Opera House manager writes ... (1914)

Was knocked over by a mobility scooter into a spinner rack of bras in Matalan.

'self-strangled traffic' (1914) ... interesting this was noticed in the earliest days of the motor car

It's coming, it's in the trees ...

great leap in the public understanding of science in 1912

'badly dressed men' (1910), one for @dieworkwear.bsky.social perhaps

Elephunt Hunt in the Strand

"Baby crocodiles are priced at Covent Garden at £1. When they grow too big they are returned to the dealers."

unexpected side-effect of the building of Aldwych, Covent Garden's 'rat plague' of 1903

'Sleeping Girl.' (1927) Just like Laura Knight, Dod Procter became well known in Britain in the mid-1920s after painting a series of portraits of young women using the fall of light across the figures to give a sense of volume; a style which shows her admiration for Giotto.

Hooters and disguises. * [car horns and people wrapping up their faces with scarves, googles etc to protect against dust, but also obscuring their identity]

Love the patterns in these tenement railings in Kelvinbridge in Glasgow. #glasgow #tenement #railings #architecture #architecturephotography

all these Chinese students in London these days, eh? (1911)

"He had grown mushrooms for over thirty years and never had a complaint ..."

Owls and the Rat Plague

fascinating evocative piece from the Times in 1909 on plants growing amongst the cleared building site which would become Kingsway and Aldwych ... "Nature for the past half dozen years has been reclaiming the waste with flowers ... purple masses of rose-bay or great willow-herb ..."

Light painting itself on Manchester's canals

Anna May Wong, who was born on this day in 1905, in her London flat in 1928

In this painting from the 1920s, Douglas Percy Bliss has used beautifully sequenced low tones to create a feeling of unease. The picture depicts Over Palce which was situated under the railway off Newport Street in Vauxhall. It was destroyed in the Blitz during WW2.

Smuggling a dog (1908)

"This lady had stuck over her right era the pitiable corpse of a large white bird, which looked exactly as if someone had killed it by stamping on its breast, and then nailed it to the lady's temple ..." -- George Bernard Shaw struggles with Edwardian fashion at Covent Garden opera house, 1905

my Decemberists playlist is my best playlist open.spotify.com/playlist/04J...

Advertisement for Simpson's restaurant, 1905

'At Southwark, Messrs Vinden and Co. of Russell Street, Covent Garden, were summoned for having 197 half sieves of unsound plums in their possession ...'

his majesty

LRB classifieds back on form (no, I have no idea)

Theatre ~ WT Benda (1920s)

The rather beautiful Drymen Parish Church to the north of Glasgow. The central section was built in the 1770s, while the porch on the left and the stair tower on the right were added in the late 19th Century. #glasgow #drymen #church #architecture #scotland

This month, 1889, England's first Black Lady Boxers continued to give exhibition matches, performing at the New Cross Public Hall, South London 🥊 Here's 'Violet' and 'Rosaline', the Sisters Mills, pictured with their promotor, top middleweight Alf Ball: grapplingwithhistory.com/2024/03/10/f...

Mary Scroote alias Bandy Charlotte

‘It was not in his nature to do anything by halves:’ Mary Booth on her husband’s work. No lie detected. I run a course that demystifies Charles Booth’s massive Life & Labour survey and the accompanying Poverty Map. Starts Tue 13 Jan at the Mary Ward Centre, nr Stratford High St DLR short.do/wLa3Vc

Okay, might as well get this started. It's January 1, which means, as I'm sure you all know, that there's a whole new bunch of characters who have entered the public domain. This time around, it's characters created in 1930. The following is a list of pulp & pulpy characters now in the p.d. 1/

Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I wish you everything you hope for in 2026. Thank you for the conversations over the last year. This is Christopher Nevinson's  'Among the London Searchlights,' painted from a hot air balloon tethered above London Bridge in 1916.

90 years ago, this was the menu at the Trocadero's Arctic Night New Year's Eve party, 1935-36

When I first got to Santa Barbara 669 days ago I started shooting 8 bazillion Pelican photos. I slowed down a lot this year(after seeking professional help lol) but here's one I got in the harbor that I dig! #SantaBarbara #Birds #Nature #Photography

'Falling Buildings': OTD 1940 Henry Moore sketched the aftermath of the Blitzkrieg on London the night before. A collection of these images can be found here catalogue.henry-moore.org/objects/1618...

Sheep and Scafells from Yewbarrow

Little Hell Gate on Great Gable, from afar and up close. One of the hardest walks I've ever done.

ending the year as he began

This isn't an argument, it's a...