The National Museum of Denmark has donated its most exceptional 17th century Brazilian feather cape to the new National Museum of Brazil to help rebuild the museum’s patrimony after its entire ethnographic collection of 20 million irreplaceable artifacts was destroyed in a fire in 2018. Interestingly, the iconic scarlet ibis feather cape was not among […]
An excavation at the Burgstein castle site in southern Germany unearthed an exceptional assemblage of medieval game pieces: a chess knight, four flower-shaped tokens and a die, all carved from antler. They date to the 11th or 12th century, which makes them rare surviving pieces from the early decades of when chess took root in
The carved gilded wood falcon that sold for a hundred bucks at auction only to reveal itself to be a 16th century heraldic badge of Anne Boleyn’s removed from Hampton Court Palace after the demise of her marriage (and of her person) has come home to roost. As of March 4th, the 500th anniversary of
A letter by Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis de LaFayette that was stolen eight decades ago has been found. It was stolen from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Archives by clerk Harold E. Perry between 1937 and 1945. After he was caught, he claimed to have stolen the documents as a “collector,” but he just so
