I finished reading a fabulous book on the history of color and colorants called “The Secret Lives of Color” by Kassia St. Clair. The design of the book is, appropriately enough, full of color, from the multi-colored polka dots on the front cover to the color bands on the page edges. Deep dives into a particular topic over the course of history, such as this book presents, provide a concentrated look at the development of…
Ever go to a museum, especially a large museum with multiple floors and endless exhibits, and run around frantically trying to take everything in? It’s an exercise in brain overload and exhaustion. Being a museum person, you’d think I’d know better, but I’m often tempted to look and look and look until I’m frazzled. I don’t want to miss anything! But, in my effort not to miss anything, I end up absorbing nothing, which makes…
Now that I’ve worked through History’s Hiearchy of Purpose, it’s time for a lighthearted post. Since starting The Pragmatic Historian with its clock-themed photos, I’ve become obsessed with finding clocks out in the wild. Naturally, I started by taking glamour shots of the clocks we have in our house. We have a lot of clocks, most of them nonfunctioning, but that matters not at all for my purposes. Of course, eventually I was bound to…