A little opium tale from Hastings Old Town. In the mid-19th century, the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal stayed at #5 High Street in Hastings. At that time, laudanum was a widely and freely available in the UK “cure-all” for various ailments, including pain and distress, and could be purchased easily from local shops. Siddal became seriously reliant on it, ultimately dying of an overdose in 1862…. The Hastings Museum has a little exhibition on it…including a little whiff of the stuff…
Sometimes interests overlap. My VoiceMap GPS audio walk “Marylebone’s Garden Squares: From Village Green to Georgian Grandeur” passes by one of the West End’s best and most prestigious “mansion blocks”, Bryanston Court….
Which just happens to have once been home to Wallis Simpson about a decade after her infamous year in China – the subject of my book Her Lotus Year… And the scent of scandal lingers as there’s no Blue Plaque for Wallis!!!!
“Samurai” opens this week at the British Museum (through to May) – there’s a lot to see and a lot of ideas about Samurai culture, crafts, literature, painting, textiles, Architecture, diplomacy, battle techniques, gender roles, interactions with Portuguese Christians, Samurai at peace, post-abolition concepts of Samurai in film, TV, games, art, ideology etc and….armour of course
Examples of “Shanghai” range Losol (low solubility) brand ware, a highly collectable, c.1912–1936, Art Nouveau, flow-blue style earthenware manufactured by Keeling & Co Ltd. of Burslem, England. The “Shanghai” pattern features vibrant, multicoloured scenes including flowers (such as peonies), green foliage, and exotic birds…
My VoiceMap tour of art deco Hong Kong’s Kadoorie Hill and environs also takes you through a few Kowloon local markets….
Yuen Po Street Bird Market was established after the former “Bird Street” at Hong Lok Street was demolished in the 1990s. At Yuen Po moon gateways divide the length of the street into a series of traditional-style courtyards.
Keeping songbirds as pets has been a popular practice in China for centuries, particularly among the nobility and the scholarly elite, and particularly during the Qing Dynasty. It’s never completely died out and similar markets and “bird walkers” are to be found in every mainland Chinese city as well as Hong Kong. However, some think the tradition remained stronger in Hong Kong due to particularly dense living conditions and small flats.
A telescope from Voigtlander & Sohn, a long-established company within the optics and photographic industry, headquartered in Braunschweig, that recently came up for auction. And so a rabbit hole…..! It was originally sold by Chas J Gaupp of Hong Kong, of who more below….
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Chas. J Gaupp were a long-established Watch Makers, Opticians, Chronometers & Jewellers in Hong Kong – basically anything optical, lens or such like.
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Here’s a great photo of Queens Road Looking West which includes their store and is by the great John Thomson. The building in the foreground is the Victoria Exchange, and next to it is Chas. J. Gaupp & Co (#54-56). The old Oriental Bank building is underneath and behind the trees opposite. The lanterns and decorations were to celebrate the visit to Hong Kong of H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh in 1869.
I believe they had a branch in Singapore too. Around 1904 they moved their store to Chater Road. They also made chronometers, which were especially important prior to the establishment of the Hong Kong Observatory…
UK citizens will be able to travel visa-free to China for trips under 30 days. The change brings the UK in line with countries including France, Germany, Italy, Australia and Japan.
