Events Attended: Performance at Orchard House

Every time I drop off the face of the earth, I never know how many excuses to give. Let us just say that I had a massive flu followed by a massive cold, and have been wrapped up in other things. But quick, let's have pictures instead of excuses! Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott and model for the house in her famous book Little Women recently celebrated its 100 anniversary as a museum. To celebrate, CVD dressed in 1912 clothing and did a charming dance performance. I wore the dress I made by the Titanic Weekend, plus a straw hat an a silly hair curl. I was feeling sort of Mary Pickford-ey, although I think she always does more curls.

 Anyway, it was a lovely afternoon performance. Check out those cute dancers.

Jewels, Gems, and Treasures at the MFA

About couple of weeks ago (but oh, I've been busy since then), I went to the MFA with a dear friend. At the moment, they are having an awfully sparkly exhibition called "Jewels, Gems, and Treasures." There were some cool ancient things, but obviously I'm most interested in jewelry that I could wear to a dance event. If only it was mine! Here are my favorites.

Oh, if I could have stolen one thing, it would have been this. The picture does no justice to the size of this thing! It is an 1890s corsage ornament. I found a website with what I think is the same item (or something very similar, at the least), and it claims to be 23.5 cm long. Wild, don't you think?

A detail of the 1890s corsage ornament. Look at those diamonds glitter!

This early 1860s set belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln. Cool.

1870s amethyst suite. You know, I really like amethyst. It is so pretty!

I am sure I have seen this one in books. It is a Lalique hair ornament with antennae, from approximately 1900. So cool! I really do love it.

Another view of the same. It was symmetrical, but my camera makes it look funny.

An 1890s Faberge diamond necklace. Oh yeah.

Close up!

And the winner of creepiest jewelry set, this 1870s set is composed of taxidermied hummingbirds. Eww! They have rubies for eyes and little gold beaks. Creepy.

Elegance in Exile

No, I'm not in exile, although I wish I were in Venice at this moment. There is a great looking exhibit called "L’eleganza in esilio – Tra moda e costume, il tempo di Diaghilev" at the Palazzo Mocenigo. I have found a dress, no, the dress, and I am in love. I want to steal every artistic element of it, but mostly the rope-like pearls. But also the pretty drapery. And the lace. And did I mention the pearls? It is a 1913 ballgown, and I love it so much! There's an article here (about the exhibit, not the dress, I'm afraid).

 And here are some other pretty dresses from the exhibit.

Vienna, Day 5

Shopping, pastries, and an exhibit on fans and gloves... Here are some highlights.

I love these... in Vienna, you don't just get hot dogs from a hot dog stand. You get a tasty crusty roll STABBED WITH A GIANT SPIKE and then filled with a hot dog and condiments. Oh yeah.

Tasty and pretty pastries!

Adorable yet racist petits fours!

And from the exhibit:
"Brise Fan with autographs from the ball of the Weiner Musikfreunde," 2nd half of the 19th century.

I've been seeing a lot of fans like this in portraits... small roundish fixed fans for the mid-19th century and long ostrich fixed fans for late. They are kind of weird, but distinctive. I think I want one. I should probably figure out a handle, since I have some appropriate ostrich feathers already. With no moving parts, this would not be difficult to accomplish.

Of course, if you're going the fixed-feather-fan route, why stop at plain old ostrich?

16th century Venetian flag fan, for any readers who are interested that far back. It was pretty cool.

Vienna, Day 2

Day two was full of walking in the frigid cold, and museums. I love museums, and my computer is currently choking on the hundreds of pictures I took in the Kunsthistorisches (Art, but we really only did the antiquities wing this time) and Heeresgeschichtliches (military history!) museum. Most of the pictures are terrible and covered with glare, so don't get too excited. In fact, I really don't have time to go through and identify all the important ones, so those detailed blog posts (on wonderfully drool-worthy delicious uniforms... covered with glare) will have to wait. For now, here is the quick run-down of the day. We started walking. Hilarious things we passed included a Rock Pub! I don't know why this is so entertaining, but it is indeed.

 We walked by this sign, which of course made me think of my friend Adrian the Maya Archaeologist.

We walked by a cake decorating shop, and the word "zucherblumen" was greatly entertaining.

"Intensive kinder mamma-baby" sounded like something crazy, but then we decided they were different types of available yoga classes.

The art museum was very grand indeed.

It has a lot of neat Egyptain stuff, but the best were the animal mummies. My favorite was the giant crocodile and baby crocodiles, but Julia really liked the monkey-in-a-monkey.

 

 

There was too much amazing art for my pictures to do it any justice. So I'll just show you my collection of ancient Greek croquet pictures. I'm sure those aren't really croquet mallets, but I had a surprising amount of fun pretending they were!

 

 

I promise pictures of uniforms later... really. Here is a really cool plane for now.