Enrico Caruso performing “Vesti la Giubba” from the opera Pagliacci. Caruso’s 1904 recording of of this was the first sound recording to sell a million copies
HATS! Big vintage hat post. [Shhhh… I wasn’t supposed to take pictures…]
1. & 2. Circa 1868 bonnet in silk and satin.
3. Circa 1900 silk sunbonnet
4. Circa 1912 hat decoration in the style of a bird, made of feathers and velvet
5. circa 1915 velvet hat with ostrich plum decoration
6. & 7. circa 1955 pink dyed snakeskin hat with feathers
“Come to the window, little folks,
And read these tiny Story-books!”
From ‘Snow-Flakes and the Stories they Told the Children’, by Matilda Betham-Edwards, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne (classmark 1896.7.292)
Part of Cambridge University’s Christmas Advent Calender series. Thanks to an anonymous poster who told me about this.
Have you seen the Victorian Advent Calendar (a Victorian illustration per day) on the Cambridge University Library's Special Collections blog? I think you'd like it quite a lot. Infuriatingly, I can't include a link. Just look up the name. The images are pretty astoundingly awesome.
AnonymousThank you for the tip. The images are beautiful. I think I will make a few posts linked to that over the next few days. Thanks Anon!
Here’s one image:
Happy Birthday Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron and his legal wife Anna) was born on December 10, 1815 and died November 27, 1852. Most know her as Ada Lovelace. Ada was a mathematician and she wrote the first computer algorithm for Charles Babbages’ Analytical Machine, thus making her the world’s first computer programmer.
