From Mister Freedom’s website:
“The Paris of the Belle Époque (1900s) saw the emergence of a certain type of street outcasts. They lived in secret dens in the seedy and dimmed outskirts of the City of Lights, abhorred honest labor, hunted the Faubourgs and Quartier de Halles, and danced in local Guinguettes and dives, decked out in flamboyant outfits.

They were called Les Apaches…

Issued from the French lower working class, with a lack of education and absence of Future, they regrouped in loosely organized neighborhood gangs. Abiding by their own hoodlum code of honor, they woke up late, spoke the obscure slang Jare, and wore specific flashy clothes. Their dandy accoutrement combined with intimidating attitudes imposed both respect and fear from the Parisians and their police.

For 30 years, Paris’ Apaches gangs marked their territories by terrorizing honest bourgeois citizens, committing petty larceny, pimping and street fighting their lives away. For those who had ducked the knife and the bullet that bared their name or the ravage of the “Grande Guerre” (WW1), it was the inevitable outcome of Biribi or the Bagne de Cayenne.

In the 1920’s many a high society dame was spotted mingling with charismatic Apache groups in local Java dance halls, letting her hair down in a famous Dance Apache, immortalized later by Hollywood (“Charlie Chan in Paris”, 1935) and several Broadway Shows. The French movie Casque d’Or (1953) relates a true story of a famous Apache event that took place in 1905.

Bourgeois newspapers of the period and universal fascination with the underworld turned the reign of the Apaches into a mix of myth and imagery that will forever mark the Paris of the 1900s to 1930s…

These are the premises and backdrop of the MISTER FREEDOM® x SUGAR CANE Spring 2011 Collection.

Influenced by early French haberdashery and work clothes, European tailoring and Old World silhouettes, this new venture is a departure from the “Americana” inspiration of previous seasons. After extensive research and development we turned a corner onto an unfamiliar avenue (Rue de la Grande Truanderie?) to offer this new look of the Old World…

The collection includes:
* Fancy shirting in printed calico fabrics, cotton jacquard, indigo “Métis” (cotton/linen weave) and pastel color dyed cotton pique.
* French workman outfits in cotton/linen indigo “Métis” twill and indigo ticking.
* Fancy city clothes in intricately woven stripe cotton fabrics.”

Mister Freedom

Here’s a scan of a great photographers magazine from 1903. It’s actually little more advertorial tips and techniques as they relate to photography equipment and dark room gear put out by a Chicago based Wholesale and Retail photography supplier. There isn’t any imagery inside other then etchings of equipment. Regardless it’s a treasure trove of vintage photography equipment and early photography supply advertising.

I’ll scan some of the interior ads soon.

The Twentieth Century Photographer. February 1903. Walter K. Schmidt Co. Ltd., 54 Canal St. (Chicago I presume)
Press of Dickinson Bros., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

From the Seagull website:
“The Tianjin Watch Factory became famous throughout China for producing the first Chinese watch in 1961. The factory was assigned to manufacture the first Chinese aviation watch (chronograph) for the Air Force of the People’s Liberation Army. The code of the assignment was “304″.

The factory pre-manufactured three batches of the aviation watch by October 1962. In the end of the year 38 leaders and experts (industrial ministry, air command, and naval equipment supervisors) came together for the appraisal of the watch. After the meeting the Tianjin Watch Factory received permission to begin the mass production of the watch. In 1963 the factory completed and delivered 1400 aviation watches to the Chinese Air Force.”

This is the official remake of the watch as it was created in 1963; a unique and limited classic masterpiece. It has hand winding chronograph movement with 19 jewels and power reserve of over 40 hours. The watch is a special edition and comes with a wooden box and user manual.

The dial says “19 ZUAN”, Chinese for “19 jewels”. The symbols on the lower half spell “China – Tianjin Watch Factory”.

Seagull 1963

Naturally I also have great respect and appreciation for Tadd Myers celebration for true American Craftman. His project jumps across America capturing a portrait of a wide-range of craftsman.

From the American Craftsman Project website:

Trail Town Custom Boots – Saint Jo, TX

Rising Sun Jeans – Pasadena, CA

King Boatworks – Putney, VT

Jay Brown Stagecoaches – Weatherford, TX

Danner Footwear – Portland, OR

I recently picked up this interesting little tome.

“This book is widely known for its lucid account of the modern theory that sanity and insanity are not to be divided in a clear-cut way, but rather shade gradually into one another. Since this book deals mainly with the fundamental general principles of abnormal psychology, and these were already clearly formulated at the time it was first written in 1912, a considerable part of the text needs no amendment. The author has revised the introductory chapter on the historical development of the subject, and his preface explains the scope and purpose of those textual changes which he feels to be necessary. The contents include chapters on the history and psychological conception of mental disorder, the phenomena of mental disorder, dissociation, complexes, conflict, repression, manifestation of repressed complexes, projection, the irrationality of the insane, phantasy, and the significance of conflict.” — Editorial Review from Amazon.com

While an early 20th century perspective on mental illness makes for fascination reading, the reproduction of the 16th century Cambridge ornament on the cover and inside originally drew me to the book.

The original artwork source is credited to a 1521 production by John Siberch. Cambridge lays claim to him as their first official printer although there some contention about whom he actually worked for. Siberch printed 10 books between the years 1521 and 1522 that I’ve heard described as of subject matter with little appeal. The press didn’t last long as a business venture.

Whether the university can lay claim to Siberch, which would make their printing tradition just slightly older then Oxford (me thinks this just might have something to do with the matter), Siberch certainly was the first to set up a printing press in the town of Cambridge.

John Siberch, formerly Johann Lair von Siegburg (c. 1476-1554)

People have been using antibiotics for nearly 2,000 years, suggests a new study, which found large doses of tetracycline embedded in the bones of ancient African mummies.

What’s more, they probably got it through beer, and just about everyone appears to have drank it consistently throughout their lifetimes, beginning early in childhood.

While the modern age of antibiotics began in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin, the new findings suggest that people knew how to fight infections much earlier than that — even if they didn’t actually know what bacteria were.

Some of the first people to use antibiotics, according to the research, may have lived along the shores of the Nile in Sudanese Nubia, which spans the border of modern Egypt and Sudan.

“Given the amount of tetracycline there, they had to know what they were doing,” said co-author George Armelagos, a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “They may not have known what tetracycline was, but they certainly knew something was making them feel better.”

Armelagos was part of a group of anthropologists that excavated the mummies in 1963. His original goal was to study osteoporosis in the Nubians, who lived between about 350 and 550 A.D. But while looking through a microscope at samples of the ancient bone under ultraviolet light, he saw what looked like tetracycline — an antibiotic that was not officially patented in modern times until 1950.

Sciencely.com
Tetracycline glows green under ultraviolet light in this scan of ancient Nubian bone.

At first, he assumed that some kind of contamination had occurred.

“Imagine if you’re unwrapping a mummy, and all of a sudden, you see a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses on it,” Armelagos said. “Initially, we thought it was a product of modern technology.”

His team’s first report about the finding, bolstered by even more evidence and published in Science in 1980, was met with lots of skepticism. For the new study, he got help dissolving bone samples and extracting tetracycline from them, clearly showing that the antibiotic was deposited into and embedded within the bone, not a result of contamination from the environment.

Emory University

The analyses also showed that ancient Nubians were consuming large doses of tetracycline — more than is commonly prescribed today as a daily dose for controlling infections from bad acne. The team, including chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, reported their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

They were also able to trace the antibiotic to its source: Grain that was contaminated with a type of mold-like bacteria called Streptomyces. Common in soil, Strep bacteria produce tetracycline antibiotics to kill off other, competing bacteria.

Grains that are stored underground can easily become moldy with Streptomyces contamination, though these bacteria would only produce small amounts of tetracycline on their own when left to sit or baked into bread. Only when people fermented the grain would tetracycline production explode. Nubians both ate the fermented grains as gruel and used it to make beer.

The scientists are working now to figure out exactly how much tetracycline Nubians were getting, but it appears that doses were high that consumption was consistent, and that drinking started early. Analyses of the bones showed that babies got some tetracycline through their mother’s milk.

Then, between ages two and six, there was a big spike in antibiotics deposited in the bone, Armelagos said, suggesting that fermented grains were used as a weaning food.

Today, most beer is pasteurized to kill Strep and other bacteria, so there should be no antibiotics in the ale you order at a bar, said Dennis Vangerven, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

But Armelagos has challenged his students to home-brew beer like the Nubians did, including the addition of Strep bacteria. The resulting brew contains tetracycline, tastes sour but drinkable, and gives off a greenish hue.

There’s still a possibility that ancient antibiotic use was an accident that the Nubians never knew about, though Armelagos has also found tetracycline in the bones of another population that lived in Jordan. And VanGerven has found the antibiotic in a group that lived further south in Egypt during the same period.

Nubian burial bowls and cups.

Finding tetracycline in these mummies, said VanGerven, was “surprising and unexpected. And at the very least, it gives us a very different time frame in which to understand the dynamic interaction between the bacterial world and the world of antibiotics.”

reposted from Discovery News
article by Emily Sohn

A new study uncovers the ancient knowledge that Chinese builders incorporated sticky rice soup into their mortars, probably to add strength. This finding gives those involved in restoration an ancient recipe for historic buildings that seems like the best possible choice over contemporary materials.

To reach this finding, researchers conducted a variety of tests on historic sites. “Mortar samples from ancient constructions were analyzed by both chemical methods (including the iodine starch test and the acid attack experiment) and instrumental methods (including thermogravimetric differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared, and scanning electron microscopy). These analytical results show that the ancient masonry mortar is a special organic−inorganic composite material. The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which is presumably derived from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar.”

“This technology was extensively used in important buildings, such as tombs, in urban constructions, and even in water conservancy facilities. It may be the first widespread inorganic−organic composite mortar technology in China, or even in the world,” researches noted in their article.

Archaeological evidence shows that such mortar was in use perhaps as much as 1,600 years ago.

The tomb of Xu Pu and his wife built during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) “was so firm that a bulldozer could do nothing about it,” the authors said. Some religious structures and bridges built with sticky-rice-containing mortar even survived a magnitude-7.5 earthquake in 1604.

The team, led by Bingjian Zhang of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, analyzed ancient mortar from the Nanjing city wall — also built during the Ming dynasty using sticky-rice mortar — and compared it to mixtures they made containing different amounts of sticky rice in standard mortar, which is derived from limestone. The physical properties, mechanical strength, and compatibility of lime mortar were found to be significantly improved by the introduction of sticky rice. They found that sticky rice and the resulting amylopectin in the lime mortar was found to act as an inhibitor and had smaller calcium carbonate crystals than mortar without it, creating a more compact structure and causing the crystals to stick together.

Mortar with sticky rice is less permeable to water and more resistant to the stresses of changing weather than standard mortar, the authors said. This makes it more compatible with the bricks used in old buildings, and therefore the best option for conservation and restoration.

Indeed, a bridge from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) was restored in 2006 using sticky rice-lime mortar, the authors reported.

“When you’re conserving historic buildings, it’s very important to produce a conservation mortar that has the same physical properties as what was originally used,” said Belinda Colston a chemist of the University of Lincoln in Lincoln, U.K., whose research focuses on historical buildings and objects.

“If you put in modern mortar, it’s too strong for the building material,” she added. “The bricks would have been quite soft. If your mortar is too strong, you end up destroying the brick. When you build a building, the mortar is supposed to be softer than your brick.”

Sticky rice was not the only thing that ancient masons added to mortar. Vegetable leaves, egg whites, tung oil, fish oil and animal blood were all used to improve the performance of mortars in China, the authors said.

This technique wasn’t limited to ancient China, however. In the Mediterranean, eggs, pig’s milk and straw were added to improve mortars, said Antonia Moropoulou of the National Technical University of Athens.

“People in history have used whatever was lying around,” Colston said.

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thanks:
Jessica Marshall at Discovery News

Accounts of Chemical Research

Fuwei Yang is a Ph.D. candidate in physical chemistry. His work is mainly focused on Chinese traditional building materials and the restoration and preservation of soil and stone heritage.
Bingjian Zhang is a professor of physical chemistry, the head of the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Zhejiang University, and the vice director of the Heritage Conservation and Identification Center of Zhejiang University. His research interests are centered on materials for the preservation of soil and stone heritage, building stone, and biomineralization. E-mail: zhangbiji@zju.edu.cn
Qinglin Ma is a professor of cultural relic preservation and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage. His research interests include the reinforcing materials of wall painting, the preservation of metal antiquity, and paint in ancient wall painting and pottery.

This welcome Spring plant is all over my yard and around the trails I like to hike. Thought I’d post a little about it.

Wood sorrel’s nostalgic sour taste is a pleasant surprise on the trail or in a Spring salad and defines it more as an aromatic herb then green per se. It’s is easily identifiable by the three heart-shaped, shamrock leaflets. Flowers come in a variety of colors from violet to pink to white to yellow, depending on the species.

“Sorrel” comes from a French word for sour, and it’s family name, Oxalis, is derived from “oxys”, the Greek word for sharp or acidic. Oxalyc acid is what gives wood sorrel it’s distinctly tart burst of flavor that many children seemingly discover at an early age.

Wood Sorrel has some alias and can be heard referred to as Shamrock, Sleeping Beauty, Sour Trefoil, Sour Grass, Hearts, Toad-Sorrel, Lady’s-Sorrel, Indian-Sorrel, Wood Sour, Hallelujah, and by many other names.

Scientific classification: There are about 8 genera and 1,000 species of wood sorrel, primarily found in tropical and subtropical regions. Several are cultivated as ornamentals, and some species are easily transplanted from the wild. One species, a tree-like plant found in the tropics, produces gooseberry-like, edible fruits.

Violet Wood Sorrel (oxalis violacea), is a low-to-the ground plant which grows widely throughout the temperate regions of the world, which sometimes also has white flowers. Yellow wood sorrel (oxalis europaea), and Common wood sorrel ((oxalis montana) are also low growing and widely distributed, with only slight differences in size and growth patterns. There is also the low growing Creeping Wood Sorrel, considered a lawn pest. All are perennials, lasting several years. All are equally edible. They tend to grow in clumps that can range from one foot to several feet across, similar in look to patches of clover. They grow mostly in lawns and fields in sunny to semi-shaded areas.

Happy harvesting! Share any recipes you might have or create with this delicious plant.

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thanks:
wikipedia
wild food foragers

Apostle of Prosperity, engraved by Gustav Fuchs
published 1903 (colour litho)

Here’s the update on additional products we’ve tested or have come to us as highly recommended by my whiskered brethren and hirsute associates:

Skippy’s Moustache Wax is a all natural wax in a small tin. Previously Anthony P. Munoz, esteemed mustachioed member of our society, reported that his particular was wasn’t the strongest when it came to maintaining a good stiff curl on his mustache. He’s appending this review based on new 4 season testing completed in Chicago. It seems that his softer wax is a bit poor in the hot city summers of the midwest but remarkable for the bloom chilling winds of winter. This wax goes on soft even in on a frigid subzero morning and has held up remarkable well along the windy streets of the loop.

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Man’s Face Stuff wax comes in three regular varieties: unscented, gin and tonic, and newest scent, All-Nighter Coffee and Pipe Tobacco. They also release limited edition scents on occasion with promises that they can create a custom scent just for you. Ambitious!

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Hndlebars Moustache Wax
We haven’t tried this particular bees wax and vaseline blend, but anecdotally it seems to be an upstanding product.

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Canadian Plus Mustache Styling Wax is an all natural wax with 3 styles (Mild, Relaxed, Stiff) in small tins and stick form. These bees wax blends are pretty standard but have a hint of coconut in them. This family venture has just come out with a new blend made with HEMP oil!

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English Leather is another rather traditional product we’ve yet to test. They claim it has the fresh fragrance of English Leather. Whatever that means.

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Players Beard & Mustache Wax comes in a 2 1/2″ collectible tin. Each screw-top tin contains 1.8 oz. of this fine neutral colored beard and mustache wax and conditioner. The wax is for grooming control and the oils give your facial hair luster. One of the oils used is castor oil, which is well known for its beard softening qualities. There are a variety of tins with pin up styled illustrations. The wax comes in either Ozark Forest or Oak Moss Sage scents.

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For those of you who can’t grow a mustache or for other reasons are discouraged from partaking in the joy of a furry upper lip, we strongly recommend this t-shirt from the fine people at Dangerstache as an alternative.
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sources:
Hndlebars Moustache Wax
Mustache Central
The Whisker Club
The Handlebar Club of UK
Geo. F. Trumper