What better way to face cold winter winds than with the protection of a comfortable, enveloping pelisse. The pelisse was a long-enduring fashion in the first decades of the nineteenth century, resisting all efforts of the cloak, the spencer, and the cape to oust it from its place. The pelisse was more of a winter … Continue reading Outdoor Fashions of the 1830s →

Small and plain you are not, Jane Eyre. Sweepingly melancholy and whip smart — not to mention pain-inducingly gorgeous —are more apt descriptions. The Bronte sisters can spin a dizzyingly dark love story, and this most-recent adaptation sets the bar high for visual overload. 1. Vintage Oushak Rug, $1495; 2. Beeswax Tapers, $10/set of 2; … Continue reading Living in Jane Eyre →

Meg Kerr recently published Experience, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. She wrote it with the intention of trying to re-create Austen’s voice and follow the stories that were left untold at the end of Pride and Prejudice, and it has received some nice reviews from readers. This new sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and … Continue reading Experience- a new PandP sequel →

When John Thorpe's extravagance reduces the family to beggary, Maria the youngest sister tries to make a new life for herself in darkest Hertfordshire. Despite captivating two fine local gentleman, how can she prevail when Captain Tilney exerts such a dark influence on all her family?Maria - Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey Continued by Helen Bakerhttp://www.lulu.com/content/10673758Helen … Continue reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey – a new read →

The Cambridge Edition of theWorks of Jane Austen9 Volume Hardback SetJane AustenJanet Todd, General Editor“The Cambridge Edition justifies its claim to be ‘the first ever scholarly edition of the works of Jane Austen,’ and is a fine tribute to her for the twenty-first century.”– Jane Austen Society: The first modern, fully annotated edition of the … Continue reading Cambridge Edition of Jane Austen’s works →

From Design*Sponge's Amy Merrick:Dangerous Liaisons is as seductive and subversive as costume dramas come. The boundaries of cruelty, blunt sexuality and betrayal are pushed to extremes while also balancing wit and humor in equal measure. Eighteenth-century Rococo France was not for the light-of-heart or strict-of-morals, but the castles, silk dresses, dripping candles, tamed gardens and … Continue reading Living In Dangerous Liaisons →

Egg Cup: In terms of which came first to the European table, the egg may have come before the chicken. The chicken didn’t appear on menus until the 5th century BC in Greece, but wild duck eggs had been considered a delicacy for some time. France’s fashion conscious king, Louis XV, took egg eating to … Continue reading Egg Cup Designs →

Image above: Sugar nippers from Musée Le Secq des TournellesSugar Nippers: In the early 18th and 19th centuries, sugar would have appeared on the grocery shelves in the form of a cone. And nippers, like the scary looking implements above, were used to break off a chunks for coffee or tea. Larger models for the … Continue reading Sugar Snippers →

Image above: French silver chocolate pot, ca. 1765Chocolate Pots: Chocolate was both currency and food to the Aztecs — Montezuma spent his afternoons sipping bitter chocolate flavored with vanilla, cloves and pepper. When chocolate was discovered by Spanish explorers, they were so enamored with the Aztec drink that they took it back to Spain, and … Continue reading hot chocolate pots →

The exhibit Textiles In White: The Language of Clothing focuses on white textiles from the Nevada State Museum and Nevada Historical Society collections. The exhibit showcases a variety of white clothing, textiles and accessories from throughout Nevada’s history. In addition, a collection of historic fashion plates, historical photographs from the Society, clothing advertisements and a … Continue reading Textiles In White →