News — curios

There’s a lovely little post at Le Lapin dans la Lune, the blog of French children’s book author/illustrator Delphine Doreau, titled “From riches to Reckkit’s, ultramarine blue at 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin.” It talks about her encounter with a wall on that street in Dublin, striking because painted an incongruous but beautiful ultramarine blue. She was told it was blue because it had been painted with Reckitt’s bluing, which was once used as a disinfectant. Thinking that sounded a little odd (quite rightly), she investigated. The blog post explains what she discovered and where her thoughts took her as she...

[Remember, this blog here at the shop address is a mirror / backup of the real Seraphin Station blog here. Visit there to comment, ask questions, get responses, interact with others, see useful and interesting links and resources, and/or read all the blog posts, not just the highlights I repost here.] Good old chicken feet curios, a probably-New-World invention – at least in the painted, decorated iterations -- that people nevertheless like to claim have been used in all kinds of magical traditions all over the globe for *centuries,* for everything from love to money to hexing the crap out...