Category: Archive

By Martin Crevier (@Crevier__Martin) This carving of a Sphinx came to the British Museum in 1896 from Haida Gwaii, a Pacific archipelago off the coast of what is today the Canadian province of British Columbia. The artist, Simeon Stildha (1799-1889), was a chief of the Haida people, the islands’ indigenous inhabitants.

By Evelyn Strope (@emstrope) Early-nineteenth-century playing cards can tell us much about politics, society, and culture in the early American republic. These woodcut cards, engraved on paper and then water-coloured, served several functions. They represented a continued interest in ‘diversions’ like gambling in post-colonial society, where dice and card games of various fashions formed a key part…

By Kate Schneider (@sonicteeth) We fondly remember the hostess trolley as a relic of the 1970s, trundled ceremoniously into the dining room for special occasions, with its misted-up Pyrex dishes filled with damp Christmas dinners and near-sliceable gravy kept warm for hours before serving.

By Savannah Pine (@savannah_pine) Robert Fitzwalter’s seal-matrix is a typical early-thirteenth-century seal-matrix. Its imagery proclaims his identity through an equestrian figure brandishing a sword, which represents that he was a part of the elite warrior class, and through a shield displaying his coat-of-arms (a fess between two chevrons), which signifies his membership within a familial…