#victoriana

[rosieandthemoon]

Lover's Eye Bracelet,from c. 1860, British {via}

This example is rendered in delicate watercolor on ivory.

Popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, lover’s eye miniatures were discreet tokens of affection, allowing the wearer to carry the presence of a beloved without revealing their identity.

By the mid-1800s, such objects could also function as sentimental or mourning jewelry, blurring the line between romance and remembrance.

[prokopetz]

I suppose the big reason I prefer to draw a line between steampunk (i.e., taking modern ideas about what a high-tech society ought to look like and projecting them backwards onto an imagined 1890s) and Victorian retrofuturism (i.e., taking what people who actually lived in the 1890s imagined the year 2000 would look like and running with it) is because the second one is typically way more batshit than the first. Steampunk gets you giant robot spiders; Victorian retrofuturism gets you a habitable Lunar surface populated by anthropomorphic bat people. These are both very cool, but the latter has a certain something the former lacks.

[deaddeerbody]

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Gustave Léonard De Jonghe, In Front of the Mirror (detail)

via koninklijk museum voor schone kunsten antwerpen

[steampunk-2026]

[melismasthmatic]

favorite finds: victorian photography

I've been working on an art project lately that has me trawling through Pinterest for old photos, and I've found some really wonderful stuff I wanted to share. Some of these are dated and location marked, but some are sadly unattributed, due to the nature of Pinterest :( Either way, I'm fairly sure these are all either Victorian or early Edwardian. (I've done my best to make sure there's no AI here either!)

(C.1895.) Two librarians. Glad to see I'm not the only or the first person to resort to climbing on the shelves to reach a high book.

(New Athens, Ohio. Photographer: J.E. Williams. C.late 1800s.) You can tell this has to be late 1800s because they're getting silly with it; as camera tech gets better, both the camera's exposure time and the cost to get your picture taken have gone down, meaning more informal photos towards the end of the century.

(No info.) A lady getting her measurements taken. This is still done today! This is probably a wealthy woman having a dress custom-made for her. The tape basically creates a 3D model of her body that the dressmaker can take very exact measurements from. I especially love the dressmaker's chatelaine and hair; judging off those, I think it's safe to say this is around mid-century.

(1904.) A wedding reception! Toasting to the new bride and groom. I think they must be in some sort of greenhouse, or else they converted the parlor into one for the reception. You can see the structure of the bride's bodice really well here.

(1880.) I looove this photo. Look at that huge grin! I feel like he's imitating some older family member here. Although the banjo itself might be his, it looks the right size for him. A new present, maybe?

(South Carolina, USA. 1912) Made mom laugh. I wonder what situation this photo was being taken in? Is it a family member behind the camera, an older child maybe?

(C.1800s) This one is from an old Buzzfeed article, but no citation :( I wonder if she's a debutante. All-white isn't unusual, but the fur stole (?) she's wearing speaks to a special occasion of some kind.

(No info.) Caught napping, with her shoes on and her hair still up! I love how you can see the weight and texture of the fabric in the way her skirt folds.

(1915.) All dressed up for their first communion, as you can see from the white arm-bands on the left arms.

And finally, for this post at least:

(C.1855-60) What I assume to be somebody's pet, because the Victorians were all about bringing undomesticated animals into their homes. Somebody must have loved this raccoon a lot to get an ambrotype done of it in the '50s!

[inevitablies]

The Time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Had A Pet Sea Snail

I've been reading the diary Doyle kept of his time as a ship's surgeon aboard an Arctic whaling vessel in 1880, and you all deserve to hear the tale of John Thomas, Doyle's pet Clione limacina, which he drew in the above picture.

Doyle, then 21, found John Thomas on June 3rd, 1880:

Brought up a most beautiful Clio or Sea Snail, a couple of inches long, looking like some weird little fairy. I have stuck him in a pickle bottle and christened him "John Thomas." I hope he will live, we have put some butter and pork into his house.

The following day, Doyle attempted to feed John Thomas and wrote a short poem about the snail:

John Thomas is in an awful passion. We left the pickle bottle far from the fire, and as there are 11 degrees of frost it froze up and John has caught cold. He is sitting in a corner with his tail in his mouth, just as a sulky baby sticks its thumb into its potato box. I have drawn John's attention to the butter & pork and he took a hurried breakfast, but seems to have business of importance down at the bottom of the bottle. He's thinking perhaps of Where his rude shell by the Gulf Stream lay, There were his little Sea Snails all at play, There their Amoeboid mother, he their sire Butchered to make a whale's holiday.

On June 5th, Doyle reported that "John is well and hearty," and on the 6th, he wrote:

John was up before me and took a heavy breakfast. He is now gyrating round the top of his bottle surveying his new kingdom apparently and meditating a map. I put him in a bucket every evening where he wanders fancy free for an hour or two.

Unfortunately, on the 10th, Doyle reported that John Thomas had departed the mortal plane.

John Thomas died on the 8th of June, regretted by a large circle of acquaintances

He wrote a touching eulogy for his tiny friend:

He was a right thinking and high minded Clio, distinguished among his brother sea snails for his mental activity as well as for physical perfection. He never looked down upon his smaller associates because they were protozoa while he could fairly lay claim to belong to the high family of the Echinodermata or Annulosa. He never taunted them with their want of a water vascular system, nor did he parade his own double chain of ganglia. He was a modest and unassuming blob of protoplasm, and could get through more fat pork in a day than many an animal of far higher pretensions. His parents were both swallowed by a whale in his infancy, so that what education he had was due entirely to his own industry and observation. He has gone the way of all flesh so peace be to his molecules.

John Thomas' descendants still live in the Arctic Ocean today, and they look pretty cool!

[cynicalneoprincessism]

I'm obsessed with antique underclothes! 🎀

(damn the tumblr mature content warning automatically flagging anything that's peachy pink)

Boudoir cap - antique (1910s) Top - antique (1920s) Tap pants - Vintage (1930s/40s) Shoes - UNIF Bags - Vintge/Muchacha Jewellery - Vintage, thrifted, offbrand, etc