Category: Archive

  • 11. A Knotted Cord

    11. A Knotted Cord

    By Nico Bell-Romero (@NicoBellRomero) Receiving a knotted cord – a strand made from yucca leaves – might seem like a strange gift for Christmas, but in August 1680, during their revolt against the Spanish, the Pueblo peoples of present-day Mexico placed great importance on them.

  • 12. Ford Box Bungalow

    12. Ford Box Bungalow

    By Aoife O’Leary McNeice (@aolmcn) The coast surrounding Cork Harbour is dappled with little holiday cottages. Ivy and gorse break through the flimsy plywood walls of these boxy bungalows, and paint flakes off to reveal the curious industrial origins of these summer homes. These bungalows started life in the Ford Motors Factory, which opened in…

  • 9. The Victoria Falls hotel trolley

    9. The Victoria Falls hotel trolley

    By Nicole Sithole This hand-propelled trolley system ran on interconnected rail tracks that skirt the iconic Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe. Since their debut in 1920, a substantial number of black African men pushed and pulled approximately two million white guests to various scenic points around the Victoria Falls. Plaques displayed under the preserved trolleys,…

  • 23. Pseudo-Seneca

    23. Pseudo-Seneca

    By George Pliotis (@gpliotis) How do we picture ancient Romans? In the case of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c.4BC-65AD), eminent littérateur and statesman of his day, we have no contemporary depiction; but something about this bust (which most likely dates to the Hellenistic period) has made it a persistently popular visualisation since the end of the…

  • 17. Praying the Rosary in 17th-Century China

    17. Praying the Rosary in 17th-Century China

    By Weiao Xing (@WeiaoX) Basking in the sacred light, the Virgin Mary is greeted by Gabriel in an oriental wooden house ornamented with delicate lines and patterns (fig. 1). This unique Annunciation, as one of the fifteen hybridised images, appeared in a seventeenth-century print for Chinese rosary prayers. Its source version was Evangelicae historiae imagines,…