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Scoop of the day: Sexology

I used to go to the Merrickville Antique Show every year, but today was the first time since 2003. Talk about downsized. I think the antiques bubble burst in my absence. There were only about 25 dealers and maybe a hundred scroungers. Sad to say, the pickings were pretty slim. The stuff they’re now calling […]

Artist Trading Cards: The Urban Series

These were all created in Photoshop. I created the backgrounds using brushes and filters, and most of the foreground images are copies of daguerreotypes or other antique photographs, other bits and pieces, and some added graffiti.

(In case you’re wondering, the non-digital art continues to proceed in slow motion: I paint a line or glue […]

The 50-year plan

According to my niece Lindsay, my sister and I were expected to grow old alone and then move in together during our twilight years.

This was supposed to be us in fifty years: two old maids and our little dog.

We would have had so much fun together, doing each other’s hair and ironing our […]

A charming snake charmer

I dug up something special for this week’s Antique Photograph of the Week. And no, it’s not a dead body.

It’s a snake charmer! And a snake!

She’s got the freakiest stockings I’ve ever seen in an antique photo. And the biggest (and only) snake I’ve ever seen in an antique photo.

I have absolutely no […]

A series of morbid posts

I guess I’ve been kind of morbid lately, what with my dog and Kurt Vonnegut dying and the Dead Dave Wall and the dead guinea pig story. It’s time for a more upbeat post. Something uplifting and inspirational. Something heartwarming and joyful.

Ho hum. While we’re waiting for me to think of something like that, here […]

Antique photo of the week: Your momma dresses you funny

Poor little guys in their gigantic lace doilies.

This cabinet card photograph was most likely taken in the 1880s.

“The large collars for both boys and girls continue in favor, and are made in every style, plain and shirred rounded or square.” (Demarest’s Mirror of Fashion, June 1882, as quoted in Dressed for the […]

Antique photograph of the week: Ottawa snow and a boat named Louise

Given the unseasonably wintry weather in Ottawa this weekend, I’ve chosen this snowy portrait from a local photographic studio as the Antique Photograph of the Week.

The photographer, Alfred G. Pittaway, operated a portrait studio at 58 Sparks St. from 1890 to 1925. (He also had a studio with Jarvis at 117 Sparks St. before […]

The traces left behind

Sometimes I think about the last traces that others leave behind when they leave our lives.

How long, for example, does a former lover take to fade completely, and the last flake of his skin is vacuumed away? How long before they are completely physically gone from our little corner of the world? Or are […]

Antique photograph of the week: Smiling baby

I was just going through my old wooden box of antique paper photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s, which is something I haven’t done for a few years. I’d forgotten how good my collection is. I’ve got lots of children with toys, tea parties, freaky old people, dead people, and tons of nuns. […]

I need more

I don’t have time to write today, so I’m just going to show you two versions of something I worked on yesterday. I’m not sure which version I prefer. (Do you like one better than the other?) The little girl is from a tinted daguerreotype, by the way.

I also played with my watercolours […]