Category Archives: Antiques
Lynne and Michael Roche and Their New Old Dolls

Lynne and Michael Roche have been making artist dolls for 30 years. They are well known for their porcelain headed dolls with finely carved and articulated lime-wood bodies. They have also made a variety of ranges of different bodies for the dolls over the years, at the moment tiny all bisque jointed dolls compliment their larger wooden and porcelain collection.
“Queen Anne” Style Dolls

A jointed body and carved face decorated with stylized eyebrows and brightly rouged cheeks characterize the “Queen Anne” style dolls. English woodcarvers and craftsmen began making these dolls in the 1600s which continued through the 1840s. Affordable only to affluent families, the vast majority of Queen Anne dolls where owned by women, who dressed them in the fashions of the time.
The History of Wearing Black

Black is unique amongst colours, as a lack of colour – a symbol of mystery, of mourning and even of death itself. It is clear we must learn from the writings of men such as Beaudelaire and Wilde, who experienced how is to live in an age when one was surrounded by uniform black. The suffocating state of society being in perpetual mourning is something we would all be best to avoid repeating ever again, for once the disease of wearing black like some uniform catches on it tends to spread like the plague.
Vito Selma Paisley Chair
Wise Buys Eames Lounge Chair
Forever Young: The Teddy Bear
Shakespearean Fashion
Making a Cloth Doll in 9 Steps
Venetian Carnival: A Place to Go Undercover

The word carnival (Italian: carnevale) possibly comes from the Latin carnem levare or carnelevarium, which means to take away or remove meat. A more probable etymology for the word carnevale may be derived from the Latin carne + vale, meaning “farewell to meat”. Developed around the Roman Catholic festival of Lent (Quaresima – derived from the Latin term Quadragesima, or “the forty days”), carnevale was associated with the pre-Lenten festivals practiced on and around Martedí Grasso (Shrove Tuesday) or Mardi Gras (trans. Fat Tuesday).
Corsets and Crinoline: How to be Pretty in Victorian Time

Technological change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century led to new designs in underwear which often made life easier for women–as well as more complicated. At the same time new attitudes towards health and comfort and participation in sporting activities meant that women were actually becoming much more aware of their bodies and the harm that could be done by restrictive underwear.