Category: History

Something’s Not Right, Ma.

Käthe Kruse “Hempelchen” doll, (German, ca.1940s)

In the early 1900s a German, Max Kruse, criticized commercially made baby dolls as being “hideous” and refused to buy them for his kids, so his wife Käthe began making her own, modeling them after their own children. It became a hobby. She started taking orders for the handmade dolls, made of muslin stuffed with reindeer hair, and heads of painted papier maché.

The dolls were popular in Germany, and a 1910 exhibition in New York City brought her dolls international attention. In 1916 she received two orders (750 dolls) from a large New York toy retailer and she opened a successful manufacturing business.

After the deaths of two sons and her husband during WWII, Käthe Kruse began painting sorrowful faces on her dolls. Chancellor Hitler noticed and personally ordered her factory shut down in 1944 – the dolls didn’t look cheerful and optimistic enough for wartime (and she had refused to dismiss her Jewish employees).

In the 1950s her custom doll manufacturing business resumed, but with difficulty. It eventually recovered and her name brand is still going. Käthe Kruse passed away in 1968, just shy of her 85th birthday.

Antique Käthe Kruse “Little Hempel” dolls are collectors items (beware of  counterfeits) and can fetch up to $1,200 0n Ebay.
[Images at top found here.]

4 May 1970 – Kent State University

[Image found here, related posts here.]

Repost from 2017

Hobart North Post Office

North Hobart Post Office, Tasmania, Australia, built 1913.

North Hobart Post Office was built on part of a seven-acre (nearly 3 hectares) allotment originally granted to John Swan who was considered by many of colonial Hobart’s social elite to be a man with a shady past – he had been acquitted of ‘receiving’ at the Old Bailey in London.  By the late 1820s, Swan had a successful haberdashery business and his family acquired several properties in North Hobart including this allotment.  By the 1840s a cottage and extensive garden had been built, but by the 1890s, the allotment was subdivided and Swan Street created.  In 1903, the Commonwealth acquired the site for the new post office (refer to http://www.hobartcity.com.au).

Surveyed in 1912 and built in 1913, the North Hobart Post Office was constructed to a design by the Commonwealth Department of Works and Railways under the aegis of architect, J S Murdoch although Warmington cites the Department of Works’ Office (Warmington, 1987).  The scope of this citation has precluded further research to clarify architectural attribution.  An early (undated) postcard of the building depicts it as freestanding on a large corner site, flanked either side by picturesque picket fencing and landscaped areas.

[Image found here, more history and details here.]

The Girl on the Train


[Found here; unmodified Xweet from here. The story of the unsolved 1905 Merstham Tunnel Murder is here.]

Kunsthaus Tacheles Graffiti

The former Kunsthaus Tacheles (Art House Tacheles) in Berlin, Germany, was a large art center and squatters’ building located in the Mitte district. The building sat in a “no man’s land” near the Berlin Wall during the communist era and was taken over by artists after the wall fell in November 1989. It served as a hub for studios, workshops, a nightclub, and a cinema, with its walls covered in extensive graffiti and street art. The art center was eventually evicted and closed in 2013, though the building itself remains a landmark of Berlin’s post-Wall art scene.

The Story of Kunsthaus Tacheles is an homage of sorts, with a documentary trailer that includes brief interviews with some of the artistic squatters.

[Images found in here; click for full-size. Caption from Google AI.]

Subway Reefs

The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) deposited thousands of retired subway cars into the Atlantic, and used them to create artificial reefs off the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The reefing program began with the mass decommissioning of “Redbird” cars in 2000, followed by the “B-Division/Brightliner” cars. From 2001 to 2003, 1,269 carbon steel Redbird cars were cleaned, stripped to the shells, and sunk. From 2008 to 2010, 1,311 of the stainless steel “B-Division/Brightliner” cars settled on the ocean floor. The program came to a close on Earth Day in 2010.

No passengers were harmed during the process (yet some complained.)

[Images found here in response to RBON on FB. More info here.]

“The vane squeaks,” said Reverend Paul. “Fix it.”

Church of St. Bartholomew (aka Saint Bart’s) is in the town of Lostwithiel, Cornwall, England. The church’s origins date back to the medieval period.

    • The first mention of the church appeared around 1220AD.
    • The earliest surviving part is the tower, which dates from the 13th century.
    • The main body of the present church was largely built around 1300AD (early 14th century in Early English Gothic style), with the spire added in the early 14th century, and other parts (like aisles) from the later 14th century.

[Image found here.]

Authentic Saloon Decor

The Table Bluff Hotel and Saloon, Humboldt County, California. 1889

Seth Kinman (September 29, 1815 – February 24, 1888) was an early settler of Humboldt County, California, a hunter based in Fort Humboldt, a famous chair maker, and a nationally recognized entertainer. He stood over 6 ft (1.83 m) tall and was known for his hunting prowess and his brutality toward bears and Indian warriors. Kinman claimed to have shot a total of over 800 grizzly bears, and, in a single month, over 50 elk. He was also a hotel keeper, saloon keeper, and a musician who performed for President Lincoln on a fiddle made from the skull of a mule.

[Interior of Seth Kinman’s Table Bluff Hotel and Saloon in Table Bluff, California, 1889, found here.]

Apollo was a Frog

Coloured etchings by Christian von Mechel showing “stages from the frog to the profile of Apollo”, after the ideas of Johann Caspar Lavater, 1797

“The etchings above, commissioned by Lavater from the Swiss printmaker Christian von Mechel (1737–1817), put the physiognomist’s ideas into color and motion. Across twenty-four frames, the profile of an unassuming amphibian slowly metamorphs into that of Apollo (considered the epitome of masculine beauty). At its core, Lavater’s physiognomy relies on the belief that a creature’s true character and morality can be discerned from their “lines of countenance”, often revealed by analyzing silhouettes. In many ways, he spent his career trying to offer scientific proof of the ancient Greek concept known as kalokagathia — that goodness manifests as beauty, evil as ugliness — the focus of his greatest-known work, the four-volume Physiognomische Fragmente (1775–1778).”

[Etchings and description found here. The .gif was created in my kitchen of wonder.]

Hirschhorn, Germany

“Hirschhorn a. Neckar. Houses on the Town Wall”, 1931. From Deutschland by Kurt Hielscher. [F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1931]

The town of Hirschorn, on the bank of the Neckar River, dates to the mid 1200s AD. Top photo found here; recent photo from here. More photos by Kurt Hielscher here.