A sampling of vintage urban artifacts, Past Objects provides a glimpse into the past through historical relics unearthed from the landfills, construction sites, privies, and cisterns of New York City.
Whether it’s antique liquor bottles and opium vials or elaborately carved pipes, porcelain dolls, and obsolete tools, amateur archeologist Scott Jordan has been digging for the past since the 1960s. Featuring photography by J.K. Putnam, Jordan’s book is a window into the daily life of early American city-dwellers, as well as a guidebook for modern metropolitan diggers in search of buried treasure.
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Ever feel like you’ve forgotten everything that you learned about world history back in high school? Yep, us too. And then, thanks to BuzzFeed, we stumbled across historyteachers, a YouTube channel of popular songs remade into history lessons. Thanks to their creative covers of songs like “Bad Romance” and ”Creep” you don’t even have to crack a book to refresh your memory on what went down during the French Revolution or what we learned from the ancient Minoans — just rock out to these fact-laden spoofs of songs by artists like Lady Gaga and Radiohead.
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Known for her mesmerizing waterscapes, expedition artist Danielle Eubank sails and paints the Seven Seas, 600 BC-style.
Eubank’s eerie and evocative oil paintings capture the magic of distorted reflections on ocean waters. As the artist-in-residence on a trans-global sailing adventure, she has spent months embedded as an active crew member on the Phoenicia expedition, recreating 2,500-year-old maritime history while discovering leagues of fresh inspiration for her artistic works.
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Incorporating antique (we’re talking turn-of-the-last-century) photos and images, mapping site SepiaTown is like an online time capsule of cities around the world.
Users are able to upload historical images of buildings and other locations with precise addresses, so you can see just what the spot you’re standing on looked like 100 years ago. SepiaTown’s Then/Now feature allows you to compare a historical image to the current Google Street View, or you can map historical events, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 or the 1928 UK Suffrage movement.
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The Associated Press just blew our minds: a complete nitrate film reel dating from a century ago. Featuring a dramatized version of Abraham Lincoln. Directed by and starring the older brother of legendary director John Ford. Found intact in a New Hampshire barn. Francis Ford’s silent film When Lincoln Paid will debut at Keene State College after a yearlong restoration project by the National Film Preservation Foundation. This story comes from so far out in left field that we have to wonder if Banksy had anything to do with it. But nevermind us, watch two whole clips for yourself! Without further adieu:
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The heirs of iconic architect Richard Neutra (you may have heard of him; he’s got a sick typeface) have won their own Battle of Gettysburg after squaring off against historical preservationists who sought to return the battlesite to its original sylvan state. In 1999, the National Park Service declared its intention to demolish the L.A.-based architect’s Cyclorama Center, a 1962 modernist edifice built to house a giant circular painting depicting Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Civil War purists consider the 20th-century landmark building an “incursion on the historic site of Pickett’s charge, where Union forces held back a Confederate assault on the third day of the battle.” The presiding judges may not have ended the war, but Neutra’s design has received a stay of execution for now. Read More »
Voyeurism and nostalgia, two great pastimes of the internet age, come together in this set of vintage passport photos of famous artists, writers, musicians, and dancers. Though the U.S. State Department now decrees that “photographs should be taken in normal street attire, without a hat or headgear that obscures the hair or hairline,” Isadora Duncan and Mary Cassatt would have pooh-poohed those ridiculous rules. After all, one must hold a sense of decorum whilst engaging in travel abroad.
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The great weight of history is at times hard to grasp, so it’s always intriguing to see how our cultural institutions of record keep the narrative going. The Museum of Jewish Heritage, located on the lower tip of Manhattan overlooking New York Harbor, Lady Liberty, and Ellis Island, has just opened a spiffy new wing that incorporates audio technology to tell the story of its predecessors. Combining sensory architecture (a panoramic 4th floor perch created by C&G Partners) with aural ephemera (a sound installation by Potion Design), the collaborative project is designed to feature moving testimonials by emigrés recounting their experiences of arriving in America. Click through to listen to our exclusive audio clips from the exhibition Voices of Liberty. Read More »
The Internet is a glorious thing, especially when it hosts images of archaic design work that uncannily predates current trends in architecture. The color prints in question, by Iakov Chernikhov, a Russian constructivist architect and graphic designer, illustrate 101 Architectural Fantasies and comprise one of the only avant-garde art books published in the Eastern bloc during the Stalinist era. Peep his innovative architecture after the jump.
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