The scholar-elite class of dynastic China were not always engrossed in studying or affairs of state. This gourd with ivory-carved lid held live crickets, who were set to fight in staged cricket matches for the amusement of the Chinese intelligentsia. From 19th-century Qing China, the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Merry Christmas! Krampus traditions linking a perhaps pre-Christian hairy goat-demon with Santa got revived in Eastern European countries by the early 1900s. Krampus played the…
This haunting painting by John Singer Sargent (‘Gassed,’ 1919) shows the horrific consequences of Mustard Gas that nations used against enemy soldiers in the First…
Behold the Bayon Temple, one of several built under King Jayavarman VII (d. 1219) of the Khmer Empire of Medieval Camodian fame.Many consider Jayavarman VII…