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1922, the birth year of literary modernism - Woolf, Eliot, Forster, Lawrence
1922 was the birth year of literary modernism!TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Vivien EliotThe GuardianThe World Broke in Two: the Year That Changed Literature (Deckle Edge, 2017) by Bill Goldstein wanted...
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Designing quality working class housing: Prince Albert!
Prince Albert studying, Queen Victoria looking on1859The early C19th saw rapid industrialisation & urbanisation in the UK. With it came a heap of related problems such as deficiencies in...
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Re-analysing old history is valuable: Bayeux Tapestry
Map of Normandy in France and Hastings in EnglandKhan AcademyConsider the issue of re-writing history over time, even when the original sources was well accepted. When reading Marco Polo’s writing for...
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Clarice Cliff: star pottery in mid C20th
Fruit fanastique, 1929Clarice Cliff (1899–1972) was born to Harry and Ann Cliff in Stoke-on-Trent, one of 7 children. From 13 she worked in The Potteries, her talent first noted in 1916 when she...
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Honouring WW1 men in Ballarat
Welcoming back their surviving sons and brothers to Ballarat1919, Victorian Collections.Because dead soldiers were not repatriated to Australia from Europe during or after the Great War, the dead were...
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2024 - great year for Tamara de Lempicka!
Madonna will showcase Lempicka’s art on her Celebration Concert Tour, Lempicka The Musical on Broadway in Mar 2024. An exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honour Museum will reevaluate her style...
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Australia WW2 rationing was hard; UK's was tougher and longer
Petrol in the UK was the first commodity to be rationed, although it was supplied for essential services eg doctors and farmers. When a North Atlantic blockade by German U-Boats stopped imported food,...
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Why was the Mona Lisa stolen in 1911?
Many years ago I examined the theft of the Mona Lisa in this blog. So now let us re-examine the most famous painting in the universe, by Leonardo da Vinci in 1503-16, to reveal a different motive from...
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#30plus: great MIRC channel 1993-2023
#Israel was the very first IRC channel that both Daniel ben Sefer-Dabas Sydney and Helen Webberley-Heloise Melbourne had been involved in. We met many fine people who remained close friends,...
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Kashmira Bulsara honours bro Freddie Mercury
Art Deco fans will enjoy Sarah Hue-Williams’ book A Kind of Magic: Art Deco Vanity Cases (2017). It was written in collaboration with Peter Edwards, a London dealer in C20th Art Deco jewellery. A...
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fine Hungarian-Australian goldrush silver artist: Ernest Leviny
The Leviny house Buda, in Castlemainebought and renovated in 1863Ernest Leviny (1818-1905) was a Hungarian and a citizen of the Austro Hungarian Empire. He moved from a small town to Budapest, to train...
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Melbourne’s literary culture may fade: Hill of Content closing
Albert Bert Spencer (1886-) was born in Balmain Sydney, younger son of Henrik Henry Spencer, a Danish labourer and his wife Alice. The father died when Bert was a toddler, meaning the 3 siblings were...
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Hilda Rix Nicholas: France, WW1, Aus art
Hilda Rix (1884-1961) was born in rural Victoria. Her mother was artistic so Hilda was allowed to study at the National Gallery School Melbourne from 1902-5 under Frederick McCubbin, Australia’s...
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Quokkas - Australia's lovable marsupial
Scientists believe that marsupials evolved in Nth America, spread to Sth America and thence to Australia, formerly connected continents. Most marsupials died out in the Americas, beaten by...
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Australian Utopia in Paraguay part 2
After the crises of the Maritime Dispute in 1890, Shearers’ Dispute in 1891 and the Great Depression of early 1890s, many in Australia’s working class believed that their nation could never be a...
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Coffee and culture in Budapest’s N.Y Cafe
In 1894, during Budapest's golden fin-de-siècle era, a grandiose facility was built in the city centre. Alajos Hauszmann was commissioned to plan the design and along with Flóris Korb and Kálmán...
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Australian art dealer, collector, patron: Joseph Brown
Born Josef Braun (1918-2009) in Lodz Poland, he arrived in Australia with his father and siblings in 1933. At 15 he settled in Melbourne and attended Princes Hill Central School. Brown showed an...
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Anne Lister: Georgian businesswoman, diarist, traveller, gay
Anne Lister (1791-1840) was born in Halifax Yorks and spent her childhood in her parents’ home. And she was a regular visitor to her aunt’s grand family estate Shibden Hall. Portrait of Anne Lister in...
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The delicious history of ice cream
I REALLY wanted to buy a beautifully hand painted pair of Coalport porcelain ice pails, c1802. An orange pheasant with golden wings perched on branches blooming with red and gold flowers. Then see...
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Brilliant business family Wertheimers and Coco Chanel
Ernest Wertheimer (1852-1927) emigrated from Alsace to Paris in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Ernest purchased an interest in the innovative theatrical make-up company, Bourjois. Later his sons...
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