“Z wysokiego pola” (From the High Field) is one of my favorite songs by Orkiestra św. Mikołaja. The melody of the song is Hungarian, while the text is a Polish ballad from the region near Zamość— an ancestral land. In the early nineteenth century my great 4x grandfather had an estate in Zalesie. […]
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It’s farily common to find the dates of buildings carved into their facades, but occasionally the years of constructions were marked in other places, for example on the floor near the main entrance, such as can be seen in my posts about terrazzo or on tiles as seen below. This one […]
Inside of Les Kurbas Theater in Lviv is a ghost sign in French. The building was built in 1909 and originally functioned as a variety theater. The sign dates from the first era (1909-1918), or possibly from the interwar period since I see “Polonia” written there (though seems that during […]
A ghost sign on a former bookstore called Nowości, which existed in the interwar period. Today the space houses a small store selling art and office supplies, among other things. Here’s a listing of the bookstore in a directory from 1939:
I bought my tsymbaly (hammered dulcimer) from the Tafiychuks—a family of musicians and instrument makers that lives in the Carpathian Mountains. Mykhailo Tafiychuk, or “the Last Hutsul Musical Magician” as Cobblestone Freeway dubbed him in this article, makes many different ancient instruments such as the hurdy gurdy, tsymbaly, and duda (Ukrainian bagpipe). […]
Riunione Adratica was an Italian insurance company specializing in fire insurance and cargo-transport insurance. The company was founded in 1838 in Trieste, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. “Almost immediately branch agencies or representative offices were opened in Athens; Budapest; Graz, Austria; Leghorn, Lugano, and Milan, Italy; Berlin; […]
Gothenburg’s Sandwich Shop Fresh butter Fresh eggs
An interesting type of book scraper which I haven’t seen before hese are hinged so they can be kept upright and out of the way when not being used Chained to the corner of the door
I didn’t find many old manhole covers in Stockholm, and the ones that I did find were all connected to the telecommunications infrastructure, in particular, from the company Rikstelefon (see also Rikstelefon’s phone booths and markers). This one dates from 1909 – it is similar to Swedish-made manhole cover that […]
There are quite a few of these Rikstelefon markers in Stockholm. Rikstelefon was a brand of Televerket, which was a Swedish government agency responsible for telecommunications from 1853 to 1993. The makers include numbers and an arrow so I assume they point to a manhole cover or something else that […]
