Jon Agar

Won the famous Prince George pub quiz for the first time in ages, with @bat020.bsky.social and others

Pennyroyal also had many other uses. According to 1911 EB it’s name is can be roughly translated as the best (royal) flea treatment. Plus it is a ‘carminative’, which you can look up

Yep. It’s an abortifacient. There’s also a good review of Mary’s book in latest TLS

Congrats India!

*find, but fond will do

Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), Crews Hill is my plant fond of the week for #wildflowerhour

View of several floors of the storehouse. Looks a bit like Westfield shopping centre but with more decorative objects

A black box labeled Space Echo Re-201. From the Bowie collection

A zebra woodblock from the William Morris collection

A teddy bear strapped in to the left, and an X-ray of same to the right

Had a poke around the V&A East Storehouse in Stratford

Listening to @jonagar.bsky.social bring this great thread to life www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... with the telling remark that ID cards are often mooted in response to the moral panic of the day. I pop up in the 2nd half talking @carefultrouble.bsky.social's research into public opinion on digital ID

BBC Radio 4 - The Briefing Room, Why don't we have ID cards in the UK? David Aaronovitch and guests discuss identity cards

You can now hear me talking about the history of ID cards on BBC Radio 4’s The Briefing Room, with stars @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social @rainerkattel.bsky.social and @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

desolation row indeed

Finally, rather haunting prison portraits of Louis XVI (left) awaiting execution, and Louis XVII at the same time and place

Revolutionary furniture

a wardrobe from 1792 (left). One for the richer revolutionaries

Le bureau du Louis-Philippe (right), bearing the scars of revolutionary crowbarring, 1848

I love these

Portrait miniatures with a glass cover, so they could be painted with mica paste

Probably for use in acting school, showing how costume and makeup could transform a character

Flanders, c1650. Le musée Carnavalet

Yes, and goes back to the very start when they were seen as a “Prussian” thing

much balloons

Le musée Carnavalet

You may not know this man but you do

Jean-Rodolphe Perronet. He wrote the pin-making entry for the Encyclopedie

casting plan for statue of Louis XIV

Le musée Carnavalet

we were rather obsessed by the guy in the white suit and trainers to the right

Le cafe de musée Carnavalet - c’est tres chic

(seriously, there was a lot of posing and being seen going on. Also I like the way Agnes Varda appears to be helping the waiter)

une fragment of a tete masculine idealisee, as they say

2/3rd C wall painting

Le musée Carnavalet

I’m straying from the beautiful and wonderful I think, so let’s go to the Le musée Carnavalet. It’s the history of Paris museum

How about these gold coins? Gaulish mercenaries went to Greece, got paid in fancy coins (left) which they then started copying (right) in indomitable style

they’re demolishing the science wing of the Sorbonne

#histsci concrete

let’s go for a walk

entrance to the Museum
d’Histoire Naturelle, looking a bit scruffy

a few Dame a la Licorne details

cute rabbit, ravenous lion, one of those small dogs people have

The best thing in the Musee de Cluny, amid much competition, are the Dame a la Licorne tapestries

Five tapestries, each representing a sense, and a mysterious sixth one

Here’s sight. She thinks the unicorn is being a bit vain and tedious by this point. The unicorn thinks he’s the bee’s knees

“Arithmetic”

my counters bring all the boys to the yard

extra marks if you can translate the Latin at the bottom

a tapestry from probably Paris, c1600. Musee de Cluny

an even better Madonna

probably Auvergne, probably around 1500

feet of St Christopher, avec eel

nice ripples too

musee de Cluny

An opening Madonna

c1400, west Prussia/now Poland

look at the design of arms and hands

also a useful spinner with a mystery ball

prophet Isaiah, 12th C

look at that carving of limestone as cloth!

Musée de Cluny

a shortish thread of beautiful and wonderful things seen in Paris at the weekend…

Starting in the Musée de Cluny, musée national du Moyen Âge (highly recommended)

Four 11th C chess pieces made of deer antler