Sigh.

A happy and material birthday, fully perceived, to philosopher George Berkeley, Bishop of Coyne (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753).

It was Bishop Berkeley who, as part of his theory of immaterialism, phrased as esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”), asked the question “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there, does it make a sound”?

Dr Samuel Johnson, the Great Lexicographer, had no patience with Berkeley’s theories and, on a walk with his biography James Boswell, famously kicked a stone, saying, “I refute it thus!”

“Vesuvius from Posillipo,” by Joseph Wright, ca. 1788.  From the Yale Center for British Art.

That “Bashaw of three tails” intrigued me, until I discovered it was merely a high-ranking pasha. 

Now, I’m more interested in the half-bishop, half-soldier. 

Via yeoldenews:

By the 1780s masquerades had become an integral part of the social calender for London high society.

Interest in the goings on at these parties was so great that newspapers would often print a list of the characters the aristocracy had chosen to portray.

This particular list was published in the London Times on February 5, 1788, the day after the Pantheon Masquerade at the King’s Theatre.

That is one FABULOUS dress. 

Posted by oldrags:

Court dress, 1740’s-50’s England, Kent State

It’s interesting.  I grew up less than a half hour away from Kent State and I never knew that they had such a great costume collection.  My mom even went there when she was going back to school.

Today in 1789, the working women of Paris, enraged by the price of bread, marched on Versailles.  Joined en route by revolutionary reformers, the mob stormed the palace and gained access to Louis XVI himself to present their demands.

Women!  Watch our strength.

This colored engraving is in the Bibliotheque nationale, Coll.des Estampes.

Oh man.  TOOTH-WORMS.  That is one crowded molar. 

Posted by moshita: 

An 18th century hand-illustrated page from an Ottoman Turk dental book showing a molar infected with toothworms. As early as Babylonian times and lasting well into the eighteenth century, it was thought that a toothache was caused by worms. (The theory was disproved by Jacob Christian Schaffer in 1757.) These worms were depicted in art as dwelling with the demons of Hell and feeding upon the sinners. In a cavity on one side of the bisected tooth, Lucifer watches as two worms devour and entrap their victims. In the other half of the tooth, demons lord over a collection of human skulls. 

(via cavigliascabinet)

Silver sugar box, London, ca. 1744.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition of decorative boxes.

From the Prose Edda in an 18th century Icelandic manuscript SÁM 66 in  the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland.

Via shuddhi:

Odin

(Source: phassa)

On this date in 1739, slaves killed their masters in South Carolina and fled toward Florida, growing in numbers as they moved south. Called the Stono Rebellion, it was the largest slave revolt in the colonies prior to the American Revolution. The insurrection failed and South Carolina severely limited the mobility and personal liberty of slaves.

The image above is used everywhere to illustrate the Stono Rebellion, but it is actually an 1831 illustration of Nat Turner’s rebellion.  The presence of the word “Virginia” in a story about South Carolina ought to act as a tipoff.

CREDIT: “Horrid massacre in Virginia,” 1831(?). Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Wheel of Life, Eastern Tibet, 1700 - 1799 (Rubin Museum of Art)

The sun by quinn.anya on Flickr.

A map of New York City from The New York Directory for 1786 (in a 1905 reprint), in our Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 

I guess NYC was a lot easier to evacuate back then.  It doesn’t seem to extend much past Canal Street.  And look!  There was a huge Fresh Water Pond (now Collect Pond Park)!  That would have been useful.

Spode bowl, from the Spode Ceramics exhibition at Winterthur. 

If you page through the exhibition, do NOT miss the asparagus rests.  Yes.  Special ceramic items on which to rest one’s asparagus.  Life among the bourgeosie was a special, special thing.

Those are some KILLER panniers. 

Posted by oldrags: 

Wedding dress worn by Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess of Holstein-Gottorp, 1774