I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous.
Despite its roots in European paganism, Halloween is a thoroughly American holiday. During the Gilded Age, Americans took Halloween quite seriously, even going so far as to celebrate it wherever they happened to be–as German society soon discovered when the expatriates residing in Berlin shook up the Kaiser’s capital with “games, Jack-o-lanterns, mince pies, and [...]
It’s no secret that I find the “cottages” of Gilded Age Newport absolutely fascinating. While I have yet to visit the “Queen of Summer Resorts,” Kathrens brings a glimpse of this summer colony in his recent release, Newport Villas: The Revival Styles, 1885-1935. Between that fifty year period dozens of mansions and villas were [...]
The typical Edwardian woman wished to see her name printed in the newspapers but thrice in her lifetime: at birth, at marriage, and at death. Fortunately for the press-hungry, a woman’s wedding was cause for pages and pages of articles devoted to announcements, details of the ceremony, and advice for the blushing bride. No [...]
Gilded Age America saw not only a boom in millionaires, but a boom in immigration. During this era, approximately 10 million immigrants entered the United States, hungry for religious freedom and greater prosperity. The most striking of these immigrants were Eastern European Jews fleeing the brutal pogroms of Imperial Russia between the years 1881-1924. The [...]
After reading The New York Magazine’s list of the Top 20 Chef Empires, and perusing a few culinary books I’d borrowed from the library, I was struck, dumbstruck actually, that all save one of those twenty names are those of men. Many would argue that the age of modern cookery was of the turn of [...]
