art history coloring books

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, after a study into ancient polychromy of Egyptian temples, is projecting color onto carvings to show what the Temple of Dendur would have looked like new. If you’d like to do your own coloring, the Getty has created a coloring book of its collections.

Some fun typography news: a new book called Glyph* is coming out, that digs into the origins and manifestations of things like the interrobang, the slash, and the octothorpe. Someone created an app that makes it easier to transcribe medieval manuscripts. And finally, an interview with the creator of Papyrus, that second-most-hated font (after Comic Sans, naturally).

BRB putting in an application at Heywood Hill, a bookstore in London that will fill the library in your historic home for you, or get you all the interesting books on a certain topic, or you can sign up to get personalized book choices throughout the year. Please hire me!

The California Academy of Sciences has 3D-scanned a TON of animal skulls, and I lost quite a bit of time just moving things around. In a similar vein, I love the work of Fire & Bone, who 3D-scan skulls, then miniaturize them to create pendants in bronze and silver.

The New Republic talked to last few proprietors of a boucherie chevaline, or horsemen butcher shop, in France.

It’s also an interesting peek into the world of specialized French stores, and how the increase of supermarkets is leading to their decline (I recognize this might be on of my niche interests):

When I started, it was possible to sell just horse and make a fine living. Paris was filled with specialty shops back then that just sold charcuterie or triperie. But supermarkets changed that. To keep my clientele, in addition to my classic hâchis (horse mince) I’ve had to start selling pork saucisson for instance, which is charcuterie.

Departures wrote a few years back (but I only heard about it this week, so bear with me) about Paul Bartolotta’s quest to import langoustines from the Mediterranean to Las Vegas. It sounds a bit absurd at first blush, but the lengths he goes to and the eventual complete secrecy around his source (the writer is sworn to secrecy of the location of the island!) is fascinating. The restaurant is under new ownership now—the langoustines, however, have stayed.

As folks have pointed out, our next step towards becoming moisture farmers is these water bottles that convert air to water. That being said, the “ideal conditions” for this to work are 84-104°F with 80-90% humidity, so count me out!

I am in love with J002E3, an object in space that was originally thought to be an asteroid, but has now been tentatively identified as the S-IVB stage of Apollo 12, which was supposed to have been put into an orbit around the sun, but just bounced back and forth from heliocentric to geocentric orbit.

Etcetera: Someone has compiled every movie that Bill Clinton watched while in the White House. Searchable screencaps from The Simpsons. Peak Urban Outfitters: a combination turntable and cassette player (AND the article points out they’ve begun selling cassette blanks as well! What is the world coming to?!)