God’s Year by Piotr Stachiewicz (Polish, 1858–1938)

God’s Year by Piotr Stachiewicz (Polish, 1858–1938)

Entering my sans-culotte era babes

(Treasure) Hunting Jacket by Diane Savona

Risu just sent me this and I am SO DELIGHTED

Ahhhhhhh!!! Go read it! Go read it!! The cording was plied by Neanderthals!!! The article talks about how we can’t keep thinking about them as being stupid it’s so delightful! In these trying times, let’s read about some joyful anthropological and archaeological discoveries!!!

Read it!  The fact that it’s plied is so exciting!  For plied cord, you first spin your fibers in one direction (they did it clockwise) and then take that collection of singles and twist them in the opposite direction (in this case counterclockwise).  So it’s a process that requires planning and experience.  You spin your first bit, you set it aside, you spin your second and third, you ply them.  You can’t do it all in one go.   And unless this piece happens to be the work of the very first person to spin fibers, and that person was a super genius who not only invented the idea of spinning but the technique for plying, it shows that the Neanderthals were communicating technological skills amongst each other.  Which I mean isn’t news in and of itself, but this is just one more piece of evidence.

FERAL FROTHING IN FIBER ARTS THIS SHIT IS SO COOL

Holy shit this is incredible! The puts textile technology at 40,000 - 50,000 years old; the earliest previous evidence we had was 20,000 - 25,000 years.

And also, like the poster above said, this is evidence of *planning*. I was going into the article thinking “hmmm, extremely cool but probably thigh-spun two ply which is a single stage process…?” but no! This is three ply cord! I guess it might be possible to do thigh-spun three ply (be bloody tricky though which would be evidence of skill in itself), but more likely this was a highly skilled multi-stage process.

Holy shit.

every time i remember that photo of the little inuk girl with her puppy i engage in inconsolable hysterics

this is it. this is the photo of all time

Another wonderful and adorable men's haircurling scene circa 1840 by Paul Gavarni, this one in high quality! (Paris Musées). Dated 1839-1841, in the "Students of Paris" series, the dialog goes something like:

He has papillotes on his lap, there are curling tongs and more papillotes on the floor. His hair is chin-length, showing how long men's hair is at this time, he's in his shirtsleeves—it's so intimate and cute.

eta: thanks to @daffenger and @sainteverge, who suggested a better translation of the dialog that makes it even more amusing: he's actually saying that they're about to run out of the civil code, which is being used to make his curl papers!

i think we as modern humans have a tendency to forget that historical people were also humans who had thoughts and feelings and dreams just like we do

bear in mind that i'm mostly interested in medieval english history, but... do you really think that all women suffered miserable, joyless lives? that no man ever loved his wife? that no gay person ever lived in peace? that no child ever grew up to live a life they loved? that no parent ever saw their disabled child and cared for them anyway? that nobody ever had sex, and enjoyed it? that no priest was ever truly virtous, that nunneries were always places where women were sent away to be locked up? do you really think that it was just suffering day in, day out, unless you were the richest of the rich? do you really think that simply living in a different time made people stupid, senseless, violent? do you really think that people living in the past were so different from us, that they never had thoughts and feelings and dreams to rival our own?

do you really think that people in the past were not people?

Learning that certain things that you thought were widely accepted at the time actually had a lot of pushback kind of shakes up your perception of the world a little.

Like for example when a lot of people in the 1400s and 1500s read the Malleus Maleficarum, basically the book that set off the trend of witch trials in Europe, they knew it was bad and even called it unethical. And before 1400 most people in Europe didn’t even believe that witches existed. Because most Christians before the 1400s didn’t even believe that magic existed. Because “magic” was thought to come from pagan gods, and, you will note, most monotheists don’t believe that other gods exist. So witches weren’t even something that people thought about.

And when Christopher Columbus was off committing crimes against humanity a bunch of people were like “Hey, this guy is committing crimes against humanity. Someone stop him.” And eventually they did, even if they did stop him far too late. He was fired from his position as governor. He was arrested and banished from Spain. And there were people, both native South Americans and Spaniards, who actively opposed the colonization efforts while they were happening.

The book How to Plan a Crusade goes into detail about how much propaganda and recruiting efforts were needed for each crusade because people didn’t just abandon their lives and ride off into the desert without incentive or convincing, and even then plenty of people thought it was a waste of manpower or (often rightfully!) considered crusaders to be bandits not to be trusted.

When I was growing up in Virginia it was heavily implied that the abolitionist movement was a fringe thing in some Northern states up until just before the Civil war, but no. Apparently it was so large that when Jefferson bought the Louisiana territories there was a push by abolitionist lawmakers to immediately end slavery and provide all freedmen the means to found their own communities in the new territories as a form of reparations, since one of the southern arguments for the continuation of slavery was basically “Well, we’ve treated them so poorly that if we freed them then the damage we did to race relations is so great that coexistence is impossible.”

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

I am very excited to see this extant 1840s men's neckwear in this view, even if it doesn't look like much! The Victoria & Albert Museum simply calls it a "cravat", but it's in the form of a stock that buckles at the back of the neck, with a bow in front and long ends that cover the chest. It's a look I've seen in 1840s portraits and fashion plates. Here it is on a mannequin:

And in an 1843 illustration detail from Joseph Couts' A Practical Guide for the Tailor's Cutting-room, showing a man with Chesterfield overcoat, this style of scarf-like tie, and a tie pin.

The Handbook of English Costume in the 19th Century by C. Willett and Phyllis Cunnington notes, "Tie pins were now extremely fashionable [in the 1840s], worn with neck-clothes that spread over the shirt front, and also with stocks."

Albert Smith, author of The Natural History of the Gent, in an 1844 portrait (and looking just as bitchy as you would expect). A large tie pin adorns his neckwear.

1843 fashion plate, Met Collection. Two out of the three gentlemen have neckwear that drapes to cover the shirt.

The novelist Captain Frederick Marryat, drawn in 1841 by Alfred d'Orsay, for his 'Drawings of Men About Town' series. The appearance of his neckwear tracks with it being a stock collar with long, draping ends in front.

Carl Wilhelm Lange (National Museum, Denmark), c. 1840s with long ends of his neckwear covering his shirt, with tie pin and other bijouterie.

Men’s coat, ca. 18th century.

I love the flower details on the buttons, perhaps they’re forget-me-nots and this was made for a wedding?

Eighteen-Thirties Thursday: Girls Will Be Boys

'Behind the Scenes': an 1838 print by Paul Gavarni, showing an actress playing a male role telling her assistants to hurry up (Rijksmuseum). I enjoy the look at her neckwear being tied (and the shirt frill, although this is the twilight of frilled shirts in menswear).

Aside from fancy dress balls, which seemed to be full of women wearing male costumes and Turkish trousers, the stage was where a Romantic-era woman could be found in masculine attire. Many popular actresses were male impersonators.

Madame Vestris (Lucia Elizabeth Vestris) as Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child, ca. 1830 (V&A)

Mary Anne Keeley as Jack Sheppard the notorious highwayman, 1838 (British Museum).

Maria Foote as 'The Little Jockey', 1831 print of leading ladies (detail). (V&A) This particular character seems to have a lot of merchandise and prints.

Madame Vestris again (V&A), in a circa 1830 print, reminding us that there was also a contemporary song about her legs.

Finally—if you remember the uh, very creative play about the arctic adventures of Sir John Ross and his nephew, which appeared in a toy theatre kit in the mid-1830s (hat tip to @handfuloftime), the role of "Clara Truemore", love interest of the captain's nephew James Clark Edward Ross, is a breeches role, and Clara spends most of the play disguised as "Harry Halyard."

I feel like there is something inherently queer about this, despite the long tradition of "Sweet Polly Olivers" in male drag pursuing their lovers in ballads and broadsides. I wonder how the audience perceived these characters.

1873-1875 Portrait of an unknown man (photo by Avit Szubert, Kraków)

(National Museum, Kraków)

ancient humans were also just some guy, if you got a baby from 60,000 BC and raised him in the 21st century he’d just be another teen boy named logan who tech decks off your arm

this boy from tom björklund’s art WOULD own a minecraft creeper plushy

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok ok ok I’m so sorry but I HAVE to talk about this

there’s something so loving about what tom björklund does and just- fuck I’m foaming at the mouth here

facial reconstruction isn’t a new concept (see the Kennewick Man/Patrick Stewart incident) but it’s difficult to find people that are truly good at it! genuinely there is a big gap in this field because there just aren’t a lot of people who do it professionally!

facial reconstruction, especially from bone or bone fragments, is such a fascinating intersection of art and science, and a tremendous amount of care is put into determining what these people might have looked like.

with that said, it’s VERY easy to screw it up

configuring muscle attachments and fat distribution is genuinely *very* difficult to do, and when you do it badly, you get this (pictured above). by adding too much muscle, they gave this 600 year old man a VERY interesting jawline (notice that the bottom of the chin doesn’t match up with the bone at all!) and they *really* made him look older than he was. would you believe me if I said that he was estimated to only be 46 years old?

basically I’m just REALLY excited about Tom Björklund’s art because it’s amazing work, just from an anthropology perspective

just look at this!!!

facial reconstructions aren’t just an artsy thing that you can just say “oh, that’s cool!” to

by giving these people faces, even if they aren’t always accurate, we open the doors for the average person to connect with the past at a very human level. sure, looking at bones is cool, but looking at art of someone that lived millions of years ago is *incredible*

looking at a picture of a boy that lived millions of years ago and thinking “yeah, he would’ve loved Minecraft” is EXACTLY the reaction that these pieces are meant to elicit

Men's banyan robe made c. 1830, and fabric detail. Made of copper-plate printed cotton, in dark red, with a military design identified as Le Départ de la Garnison: Les Français en Garnison. Victoria and Albert Museum collection.

— Valerie Cumming, The Dictionary of Fashion History

going through Google Books looking for pocket-related sources and I found something interesting in an 1875 issue of the magazine “The Spirit of ‘seventy-six”

it’s a letter to the editor, written by someone who signs herself “A Revolutionary Young Person” but later makes it clear that she’s a woman. and she is incensed about These Disgraceful Pockets Nowadays

she went through a man’s everyday outfit, based on general observations, and counted up a total of 25 pockets between all the different articles of clothing. this, to her, seems a gross unfairness compared to “these little shallow things, with the opening level with [one’s] bottom or a little lower, of which they sometimes allow us one in a dress…” she’s also transported with delight at the earlier, separate pockets she’s seen on display at American centennial fairs

based on my own study of extant garments, the “modern” pockets she’s talking about are often around 9 inches by 11 inches

so there might be a bit of an answer to the question of “why was there an association between women’s rights and women’s pockets in a time period when, by our standards, they were quite lavishly pocketed indeed?”

some of them  were comparing their pockets to a truly excessive number in men’s outfits, and to the size of 18th-century examples. getting just as frustrated as we are today at our pocketless pants, fake pockets, and tiny pockets barely big enough for half a hand

“As to living another hundred years in this way, it isn’t to be thought of.” oh honey. I have some good news and some bad news…

1875 men’s fashion apparently

I have to quote this because the young lady was so Unhinged about pockets that I wish to go back in time and propose Boston Marriage

is her count correct, or typical of the period? I have no idea. is her energy IMMACULATE? Y E S

I think the pocket count is like … it’s the equivalent of using a guy in cargo pants, a button down with breast pockets, a hoodie, a coat, and a raincoat today to be like “look how many pockets a man could have at once!” Like yes, in theory it’s possible, but in reality you’re very unlikely to see someone in that specific outfit, particularly the Ulster and the greatcoat and the coat.

What is man? A miserable little pile of pockets.