Katherine Keenum

An article at the BBC website, The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make, sent me poking on the internet. The cloth in question was Dakha muslin, which unlike the coarse fabric of today was so fine that it was virtually transparent. It was said that a sari made of it could be pulled through a woman's ring. Men and women alike seem to have worn it in India. It was in vogue in the West, too (Regency romance writers probably know all about it). Rembrandt even copied a picture almost identical to this one of Emperor Shah Jahan Standing on a Globe. It could certainly play a part in a story—either the real thing or fairy gossamer. To read more about it, click here.

Website alert: The Mauritshuis has put together an exhibition, Fleeting – Scents in Colour, which includes scent dispensers to allow viewers to catch an appropriate odor in front of a painting: the bleach for linen, ambergris, the rotten smells from a 17th C canal. They're even going to sell kits in the gift shop. Now if only historical-fiction writers had vocabulary equal to the experience of their noses! Or wait a minute, for a story idea, can this fit into the category or what could go wrong?

 Via Artnet.

Blog post alert: Eye Candy for Today: Tarbell's Preparing for the Matinee caught my eye because it plays with cool interior spaces and a hat. You know the old joke: A lady from New York asks Bostonians where they get their hats and the answer is, "We have our hats!"

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A History Blog post on a 9th c. temple complex found in southwest China includes an image of tiles recovered from an ancient kiln. When I saw this one, my reaction was, a Chinese Green Man? Is that foliage on top of his head? Vines or snakes coming out of his mouth? A little poking around on the web turned up Kirtimukha, which may indeed be connected to the foliate heads of Western medieval art.

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I admit I don't understand all the technicalities explained in this YouTube, but whoa! is Time-Travel Rephotography ever fascinating (and more than a little scary). If it does nothing else for historical fiction writers, it should educate us in the ways older cameras distort people's faces so that, given an old photograph, we can try to imagine people from the past more sensitively. But like all doctored photograph, it is also a reminder of the ways we can be manipulated by computer programmers—although for speculative fiction writers, just think of the doors it opens!

Via Gurney Journey's Bringing Old Photos to Life, which discusses it and another app. from a color-specialist and animator's point of view.

Blog post alert: As a quick follow-up to yesterday's glimpse of street life in Paris at Parisian Fields, for London see John Thomson's Street Life at Spitalfields Life.

Selling odd rolls of wallpaper on the street? Well, why not? Surplus manufactured goods always wind up somewhere. Still, this abject vendor from Costume of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis by Thomas Lord Busby brought me up short. How did she obtain her wares and who were the buyers? I still don't know, but a quick search led me to Eking out a living on the streets of Paris at a wonderful website to explore, Parisian Fields, and to A brief history of wallpaper at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Question: would you make the vendor your central character, or would one of your characters seek out cheap paper by going to a street market?

Website alert: I happen to be rereading Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones at bedtime. Its heroine, Sophie Hatter, works in her stepmother's millinery shop. Okay, so today something prompted me to check to see whether Jim Kay is working on illustrations for another Harry Potter book. He is, The Order of the Phoenix, as I discovered at the website he shares with his wife Louise Clark. Who, yes! is a hatter. Go take a look her Millinery page if you love hats; they're all as delicious as this one (which is perfect for a Sophie Hatter creation). And if you are curious about Diana Wynne Jones, a Tor essay on where to start reading her books is a good overview.

Serendipity delivers again. No sooner had I read Maria Dahvana Headley's exhilarating new translation of Beowulf, with its dragon fight, when up pops this splendid illustration of a different one by Sija Hong in Monstrous Tales: Stories of Strange Creatures and Fearsome Beasts from Around the World (2020). According to her website, the artist is "is a Chinese award-winning illustrator based in New York City." She is wholly new to me, and very appealing. Check out her website for more of her work. (Yeah, and, bro/sis, check out Beowulf, too.)

Via Lines and Colors.

Efforts to pass the 19th Amendment (""The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex") began in 1878. On the day before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated president on March 4, 1913, the National American Woman Suffrage Association's procession in Washington, D.C., highlighted and energized a new push to get it passed. I suppose one can regret that a commission for this cover was given to illustrator Benjamin Moran Dale instead of woman, but then again talent should not be denied or abridged on account of sex! For interior pages of the program, click here. For the participation by a Black sorority, click here. For a college student's excellent essay with photographs, click here. Now, if only the vote had brought equal pay for equal work …