Cats in Medieval Manuscripts & Paintings

in Art, History, Religion | February 5th, 2026

Renais­sance artist Albrecht Dür­er  (1471–1528) nev­er saw a rhi­no him­self, but by rely­ing on eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the one King Manuel I of Por­tu­gal intend­ed as a gift to the Pope, he man­aged to ren­der a fair­ly real­is­tic one, all things con­sid­ered.

Medieval artists’ ren­der­ings of cats so often fell short of the mark, Youtu­ber Art Deco won­ders if any of them had seen a cat before.

Point tak­en, but cats were well inte­grat­ed into medieval soci­ety.

Roy­al 12 C xix f. 36v/37r (13th cen­tu­ry)

Cats pro­vid­ed medieval cit­i­zens with the same pest con­trol ser­vices they’d been per­form­ing since the ancient Egyp­tians first domes­ti­cat­ed them.

Ancient Egyp­tians con­veyed their grat­i­tude and respect by regard­ing cats as sym­bols of divin­i­ty, pro­tec­tion, and strength.

Cer­tain Egypt­ian god­dess­es, like Bastet, were imbued with unmis­tak­ably feline char­ac­ter­is­tics.

The Vin­tage News reports that harm­ing a cat in those days was pun­ish­able by death, export­ing them was ille­gal, and, much like today, the death of a cat was an occa­sion for pub­lic sor­row:

When a cat died, it was buried with hon­ors, mum­mi­fied and mourned by the humans. The body of the cat would be wrapped in the finest mate­ri­als and then embalmed in order to pre­serve the body for a longer time. Ancient Egyp­tians went so far that they shaved their eye­brows as a sign of their deep sor­row for the deceased pet.

Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty Library, MS 24  f. 23v (Eng­land, c 1200)

The medieval church took a much dark­er view of our feline friends.

Their close ties to pagan­ism and ear­ly reli­gions were enough for cats to be judged guilty of witch­craft, sin­ful sex­u­al­i­ty, and frat­er­niz­ing with Satan.

In the late 12th-cen­tu­ry, writer Wal­ter Map, a soon-to-be archdea­con of Oxford, declared that the dev­il appeared before his devo­tees in feline form:

… hang­ing by a rope, a black cat of great size. As soon as they see this cat, the lights are turned out. They do not sing or recite hymns in a dis­tinct way, but they mut­ter them with their teeth closed and they feel in the dark towards where they saw their lord, and when they find it, they kiss it, the more humbly depend­ing on their fol­ly, some on the paws, some under the tail, some on the gen­i­tals. And as if they have, in this way, received a license for pas­sion, each one takes the near­est man or woman and they join them­selves with the oth­er for as long as they choose to draw out their game.

Pope Inno­cent VIII issued a papal bull in 1484 con­demn­ing the “devil’s favorite ani­mal and idol of all witch­es” to death, along with their human com­pan­ions.

13th-cen­tu­ry Fran­cis­can monk Bartholo­maeus Angli­cus refrained from demon­ic tat­tle, but nei­ther did he paint cats as angels:

He is a full lech­er­ous beast in youth, swift, pli­ant, and mer­ry, and leapeth and reseth on every­thing that is to fore him: and is led by a straw, and playeth there­with: and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth sly­ly in wait for mice: and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places: and when he taketh a mouse, he playeth there­with, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fight­ing for wives, and one scratch­eth and ren­deth the oth­er griev­ous­ly with bit­ing and with claws. And he maketh a ruth­ful noise and ghast­ful, when one prof­fer­eth to fight with anoth­er: and unneth is hurt when he is thrown down off an high place. And when he hath a fair skin, he is as it were proud there­of, and goeth fast about: and when his skin is burnt, then he bideth at home; and is oft for his fair skin tak­en of the skin­ner, and slain and flayed.

Pigs and rats also had a bad rep, and like cats, were tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in great num­bers by pious humans.

The Work­sop Bes­tiary Mor­gan Library, MS M.81 f. 47r (Eng­land, c 1185)

Not every medieval city was anti-cat. As the Aca­d­e­m­ic Cat Lady Johan­na Feen­stra writes of the above illus­tra­tion from The Work­sop Bes­tiary, one of the ear­li­est Eng­lish bes­tiaries:

Some would have inter­pret­ed the image of a cat pounc­ing on a rodent as a sym­bol for the dev­il going after the human soul. Oth­ers might have seen the cat in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent light. For instance, as Eucharis­tic guardians, mak­ing sure rodents could not steal and eat the Eucharis­tic wafers.

Bodleian Library Bod­ley 764 f. 51r (Eng­land, c 1225–50)

St John’s Col­lege Library, MS. 61 (Eng­land (York), 13th cen­tu­ry)

It took cat lover Leonar­do DaVin­ci to turn the sit­u­a­tion around, with eleven sketch­es from life por­tray­ing cats in char­ac­ter­is­tic pos­es, much as we see them today. We’ll delve more into that in a future post.

Con­rad of Megen­berg, ‘Das Buch der Natur’, Ger­many ca. 1434. Stras­bourg, Bib­lio­thèque nationale et uni­ver­si­taire, Ms.2.264, fol. 85r

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than Once Thought

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

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The World’s Oldest Cave Art, Discovered in Indonesia, Is at Least 67,800 Years Old

in Archaeology, Art, History | January 26th, 2026

Image by Ahdi Agus Okta­viana

Over the cen­turies, a vari­ety of places have laid cred­i­ble claim to being the world’s art cen­ter: Con­stan­tino­ple, Flo­rence, Paris, New York. But on the scale of, say, ten mil­len­nia, the hot spots become rather less rec­og­niz­able. Up until about 20,000 years ago, it seems that cre­ators and view­ers of art alike spent a good deal in one par­tic­u­lar cave: Liang Metan­duno, locat­ed on Muna Island in Indone­si­a’s South­east Sulawe­si province. The many paint­ings on its walls of rec­og­niz­able humans, ani­mals, and boats have brought it fame in our times as a kind of ancient art gallery. But in recent years, a much old­er piece of work has been dis­cov­ered there, one whose cre­ation occurred at least 67,800 years ago.

The cre­ation in ques­tion is a hand­print, faint but detectable, prob­a­bly made by blow­ing a mix­ture of ochre and water over an actu­al human hand. To deter­mine its age, researchers per­formed what’s called ura­ni­um-series analy­sis on the deposits of cal­ci­um car­bon­ate that had built up on and around it.

The num­ber of 67,800 years is, of course, not exact, but it’s also just a min­i­mum: in fact, the hand­print could well be much old­er. In a paper pub­lished last week in Nature, the researchers point out that its age exceeds both that of the old­est sim­i­lar rock art found else­where in Indone­sia and that of a hand sten­cil in Spain attrib­uted to Nean­derthals, “which until now rep­re­sent­ed the old­est demon­strat­ed min­i­mum-age con­straint for cave art world­wide.”

It isn’t impos­si­ble that this at least 67,800-year-old hand­print could also have been made by Nean­derthals. The obvi­ous mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the hand’s shape, how­ev­er, an exten­sion and taper­ing of the fin­gers that brings to mind ani­mal claws (or the clutch­es of Nos­fer­atu), sug­gests to cer­tain sci­en­tif­ic eyes the kind of cog­ni­tion attrib­ut­able specif­i­cal­ly to Homo sapi­ens. This dis­cov­ery has great poten­tial rel­e­vance not just to art his­to­ry, but even more so to oth­er fields con­cerned with the devel­op­ment of our species. While it had pre­vi­ous­ly been thought, for instance, that the first human set­tlers of Aus­tralia made their way there through Indone­sia (in a time of much low­er sea lev­els) between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, the hand­print­’s exis­tence in Liang Metan­duno sug­gests that the migra­tion took place even ear­li­er. All these mil­len­nia lat­er, Aus­tralia remains a favored des­ti­na­tion for a vari­ety of immi­grants — some of whom do their part to keep Syd­ney’s art scene inter­est­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er the World’s First “Art Stu­dio” Cre­at­ed in an Ethiopi­an Cave 43,000 Years Ago

A Recent­ly Dis­cov­ered 44,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing Tells the Old­est Known Sto­ry

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Foot­prints That Could Be the World’s Ear­li­est Cave Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Discover Michelangelo’s First Painting, Created When He Was Only 12 or 13 Years Old

in Art, History | January 15th, 2026

Think back, if you will, to the works of art you cre­at­ed at age twelve or thir­teen. For many, per­haps most of us, our out­put at that stage of ado­les­cence amount­ed to direc­tion­less doo­dles, chaot­ic comics, and a few unsteady-at-best school projects. But then, most of us did­n’t grow up to be Michelan­ge­lo. In the late four­teen-eight­ies, when that tow­er­ing Renais­sance artist was still what we would now call a “tween,” he paint­ed The Tor­ment of Saint Antho­ny, a depic­tion of the tit­u­lar reli­gious fig­ure beset by demons in the desert. Though based on a wide­ly known engrav­ing, it nev­er­the­less shows evi­dence of rapid­ly advanc­ing tech­nique, inspi­ra­tion, and even cre­ativ­i­ty — espe­cial­ly when placed under the infrared scan­ner.

For about half a mil­len­ni­um, The Tor­ment of Saint Antho­ny was­n’t thought to have been paint­ed by Michelan­ge­lo. As explained in the video from Inspi­rag­gio just below, when the paint­ing sold at Sothe­by’s in 2008, the buy­er took it to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art for exam­i­na­tion and clean­ing.

“Beneath the lay­ers of dirt accu­mu­lat­ed over the cen­turies,” says the nar­ra­tor, “a very par­tic­u­lar col­or palette appeared. “The tones, the blends, the way the human fig­ure was treat­ed: all of it began to resem­ble the style Michelan­ge­lo would use years lat­er in none oth­er than the Sis­tine Chapel.” Infrared reflec­tog­ra­phy sub­se­quent­ly turned up pen­ti­men­ti, or cor­rec­tion marks, a com­mon indi­ca­tion that “a paint­ing is not a copy, but an orig­i­nal work cre­at­ed with artis­tic free­dom.”

It was the Kim­bell Art Muse­um in Fort Worth, Texas that first bet big on the prove­nance of The Tor­ment of Saint Antho­ny. Its new­ly hired direc­tor pur­chased the paint­ing after turn­ing up “not a sin­gle con­vinc­ing argu­ment against the attri­bu­tion.” Thus acquired, it became “the only paint­ing by Michelan­ge­lo locat­ed any­where in the Amer­i­c­as, and also just one of four easel paint­ings attrib­uted to him through­out his entire career,” dur­ing most of which he dis­par­aged oil paint­ing itself. About a decade lat­er, and after fur­ther analy­sis, the art his­to­ri­an Gior­gio Bon­san­ti put his con­sid­er­able author­i­ty behind a defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion that it is indeed the work of the young Michelan­ge­lo. There remain doubters, of course, and even the noto­ri­ous­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing artist him­self may have con­sid­ered it an imma­ture work unwor­thy of his name. But who else could have cre­at­ed an imma­ture work like it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of Leonar­do da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

When Michelan­ge­lo Cre­at­ed Artis­tic Designs for Mil­i­tary For­ti­fi­ca­tions to Pro­tect Flo­rence (1529–1530)

How Four Mas­ters — Michelan­ge­lo, Donatel­lo, Ver­roc­chio & Berni­ni — Sculpt­ed David

A Secret Room with Draw­ings Attrib­uted to Michelan­ge­lo Opens to Vis­i­tors in Flo­rence

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Download 435 High Resolution Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of America

in Art, Biology, Nature | January 15th, 2026

In our expe­ri­ence, bird lovers fall into two gen­er­al cat­e­gories:

Keen­ly obser­vant cat­a­loguers like John James Audubon …

And those of us who can­not resist assign­ing anthro­po­mor­phic per­son­al­i­ties and behav­iors to the 435 stars of Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca, a stun­ning col­lec­tion of prints from life-size water­col­ors he pro­duced between 1827 and 1838.

Our sus­pi­cions have lit­tle to do with biol­o­gy, but rather, a cer­tain zesti­ness of expres­sion, an overem­phat­ic beak, a droll gleam in the eye.

The Audubon Society’s new­ly redesigned web­site abounds with trea­sure for those in either camp:

Free high res down­loads of all 435 plates.

Mp3s of each specimen’s call.

And vin­tage com­men­tary that effec­tive­ly splits the dif­fer­ence between sci­ence and the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous locu­tions of anoth­er age.

Take for instance, the Bur­row­ing Owl, as described by self-taught nat­u­ral­ist Thomas Say (1787–1834):

It is delight­ful, dur­ing fine weath­er, to see these live­ly lit­tle crea­tures sport­ing about the entrance of their bur­rows, which are always kept in the neat­est repair, and are often inhab­it­ed by sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als. When alarmed, they imme­di­ate­ly take refuge in their sub­ter­ranean cham­bers; or, if the dread­ed dan­ger be not imme­di­ate­ly impend­ing, they stand near the brink of the entrance, brave­ly bark­ing and flour­ish­ing their tails, or else sit erect to recon­noitre the move­ments of the ene­my.

The notes of ornithol­o­gist John Kirk Townsend (1809 – 1851) sug­gest that not every­one was as tak­en with the species as Say (who was, in all fair­ness, the father of Amer­i­can ento­mol­o­gy):

Noth­ing can be more unpleas­ant than the bag­ging of this species, on account of the fleas with which their plumage swarms, and which in all prob­a­bil­i­ty have been left in the bur­row by the Bad­ger or Mar­mot, at the time it was aban­doned by these ani­mals. I know of no oth­er bird infest­ed by that kind of ver­min. 

The Com­mon Gallinule, above, sug­gests that there’s often more to these birds than meets the eye. His some­what sheep­ish look­ing coun­te­nance belies the red hot love life Audubon recounts:

… the man­i­fes­ta­tions of their ama­to­ry propen­si­ty were quite remark­able. The male birds court­ed the females, both on the land and on the water; they fre­quent­ly spread out their tail like a fan, and moved round each oth­er, emit­ting a mur­mur­ing sound for some sec­onds. The female would after­wards walk to the water’s edge, stand in the water up to her breast, and receive the caress­es of the male, who imme­di­ate­ly after would strut on the water before her, jerk­ing with rapid­i­ty his spread tail for awhile, after which they would both resume their ordi­nary occu­pa­tions.

Being that we are firm­ly plant­ed in the sec­ond type of bird lover’s camp, this ornitho­log­i­cal cor­nu­copia main­ly serves to whet our appetite for more Falseknees, self-described bird nerd Joshua Barkman’s beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered web­com­ic.

Yes, Audubon’s Indi­go Bird, aka Petit Pape­bleu, “an active and live­ly lit­tle fel­low” who “pos­sess­es much ele­gance in his shape, and also a cer­tain degree of firm­ness in his make” was sep­a­rat­ed by a cen­tu­ry or so from “Mood Indi­go”—we pre­sume that’s the tune stuck in Barkman’s bird’s head—but he does look rather pre­oc­cu­pied, no?

Pos­si­bly just think­ing of meal­worms…

Explore Audubon’s Birds of Amer­i­ca by chrono­log­i­cal or alpha­bet­i­cal order, or by state, and down­load them all for free here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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A Brief History of Surrealist Art: From the Bible and Ancient Egypt to Salvador Dalí’s Dream Worlds

in Art, History | January 12th, 2026

The term sur­re­al­ism — or rather, sur­réal­isme — orig­i­nates from the French words for “beyond real­i­ty.” That’s a zone, we may assume, reach­able by only dar­ing, and pos­si­bly unhinged, artis­tic minds. But in fact, even the most down-to-earth among us go beyond real­i­ty on a night­ly basis. We do so in our dreams, where the accept­ed mechan­ics of space and time, life and death, and cause and effect do not apply. Or rather, they’re replaced by anoth­er set of rules entire­ly, which feels per­fect­ly con­sis­tent and con­vinc­ing to us in the moment. Such “dream log­ic” may frus­trate the friends and fam­i­ly we attempt to regale with tales of our night visions, but as the sur­re­al­ists found, it could also be put to the ser­vice of endur­ing art.

In the Hochela­ga video above, that chan­nel’s cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny pro­vides a long his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ism in a short run­ning time. Trac­ing that move­men­t’s roots, he goes all the way back to the ancient cul­ture of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­i­nals, for whom the con­cept of the “dream­time” still plays an impor­tant role — and has inspired “pos­si­bly the old­est unbro­ken artis­tic tra­di­tion in the world.”

In oth­er places and oth­er eras of antiq­ui­ty, dreams were also con­sid­ered “a bridge for the spir­it world and the phys­i­cal one.” For the Egyp­tians, “these night­time voy­ages were a chance to see real­i­ty more clear­ly,” as evi­denced by resut, their word for “dream,” which also means “awak­en­ing.” Unsur­pris­ing­ly for reg­u­lar Hochela­ga view­ers, Trelawny also finds dreams in the Bible, “a book full of visions of the divine and glimpses into the cos­mic unknown.”

In every peri­od between antiq­ui­ty and now, art — includ­ing the work of Hierony­mus Bosch, Albrecht Dur­er, and Edvard Munch, as well as Japan­ese wood­block prints — has attempt­ed to cap­ture the sort of expe­ri­ences and imagery encoun­tered only in dreams, and indeed night­mares. But it was only in the wake of Sig­mund Freud’s The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams, first pub­lished in 1899, that sur­re­al­ism could take shape, inspired by the ques­tion, “If the mind can reveal itself through dreams, what if it could reveal itself through art?” Après Freud came the uncon­scious­ness-inspired paint­ings of Gior­gio de Chiri­co, René Magritte, and of course Sal­vador Dalí. Yet none of them could have fore­seen the tru­ly sur­re­al­is­tic déluge that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has brought us. If AI reveals to us some­thing of how we think, its hal­lu­ci­na­tions reveal to us even more about how we dream.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Sur­re­al­ism: The Big Aes­thet­ic Ideas Pre­sent­ed in Three Videos

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry a Great Work of Art

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Europe After the Rain: Watch the Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary on the Two Great Art Move­ments, Dada & Sur­re­al­ism (1978)

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

The Fan­tas­tic Women Of Sur­re­al­ism: An Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Trevor Noah Explains How Kintsugi, the Japanese Art of Repairing Pottery, Helped Him Overcome Life’s Tragedies

in Art, Life | January 9th, 2026

Trevor Noah end­ed his stint as the host of The Dai­ly Show a lit­tle over three years ago, but he’s made him­self into anoth­er kind of pop-cul­tur­al pres­ence since then. In evi­dence, we have his appear­ance above on the pop­u­lar pod­cast and YouTube show Diary of a CEO. For more than two and a half hours, Noah dis­cuss­es with host Steven Bartlett (who, like Noah, also hap­pens to be African-born with mixed parent­age) his rea­sons for quit­ting that polit­i­cal-news-com­e­dy TV insti­tu­tion, his strug­gles with depres­sion, and the time his step­fa­ther shot his moth­er in the head. She lived, owing to the mirac­u­lous­ly unlike­ly tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­let, but that did­n’t stop the expe­ri­ence from becom­ing what Noah describes as the worst of his life.

Dis­cussing all this brings to his mind the Japan­ese art of kintsu­gi (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). “It’s a prac­tice of repair­ing pot­tery and ceram­ics that have bro­ken,” Noah explains. “What hap­pens is, you break a plate, or you break a vase or some­thing,” and “they put it back togeth­er, these arti­sans who do it. But they don’t just glue it back togeth­er, they glue it back togeth­er and they sort of adorn it with a gold­en bind­ing. And what you get is an object that is some­how more beau­ti­ful than before it was bro­ken.”

Kintsu­gi struck him as “one of the most beau­ti­ful con­cepts, and a dif­fer­ent way to think about being ‘fixed’ or ‘over­com­ing’ ”; it was­n’t “the idea that we are per­fect, the way we were before some­thing hap­pened to us, but rather, it is that we get to wear our cracks with a new type of pride, and a new type of beau­ty.”

Noah would hard­ly be the only per­son to see in these recon­sti­tut­ed ceram­ic ves­sels with their gleam­ing kintsu­gi seams a metaphor for him­self. Like more than a few pub­lic fig­ures in the West, he’s been will­ing to dis­cuss the vicis­si­tudes of his life in detail, and even use them for mate­r­i­al in work like his stand-up com­e­dy and his mem­oir Born a Crime. But it is unusu­al, in a chat like this with mil­lions and mil­lions of view­ers, to hear ref­er­ence made to a half-mil­len­ni­um-old Japan­ese form of pot­tery repair. That pos­si­bil­i­ty, of course, is cen­tral to the appeal of long-form inter­view pod­casts, whose con­ver­sa­tions have the time and space to go far down unex­pect­ed paths. The Dai­ly Show may deliv­er more laughs per minute, but giv­en its for­mat’s time con­straints, kintsu­gi-type talk is no doubt the first thing to get edit­ed out — and the cut cer­tain­ly won’t be high­light­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Kintsu­gi, the Japan­ese Art of Repair­ing Bro­ken Pot­tery and Find­ing Beau­ty in Imper­fec­tion

How Japan­ese Kintsu­gi Mas­ters Restore Pot­tery by Beau­ti­fy­ing the Cracks

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Charles Bukows­ki Explains How to Beat Depres­sion: Spend 3–4 Days in Bed and You’ll Get the Juices Flow­ing Again (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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300,000 Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library

in Art, Nature, Photography, Science | January 6th, 2026

Are we tru­ly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinc­tion, an era of “bio­log­i­cal anni­hi­la­tion”? Many sci­en­tists and pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthro­pocene” to describe what fol­lows the Ordovi­cian, Devon­ian, Per­mi­an, Tri­as­sic, and Cre­ta­ceous peri­ods. Peter Bran­nen, the author of extinc­tion his­to­ry The Ends of the Earth has found at least one sci­en­tist who thinks the con­cept is “junk.” But Bran­nen quotes some alarm­ing sta­tis­tics. Chill­ing, even. “Until very recent­ly,” he writes, “all ver­te­brate life on the plan­et was wildlife. But astound­ing­ly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 per­cent of Earth’s land ani­mals; human beings, our live­stock, and our pets take up the remain­ing 97 per­cent of the bio­mass… almost half of the Earth’s land has been con­vert­ed into farm­land.”

This state of affairs does not bode well for the mil­lions of remain­ing species get­ting edged out of their envi­ron­ments by agribusi­ness and cli­mate change. We learn from extinc­tions past that the plan­et rebounds after unimag­in­able cat­a­stro­phe. Life real­ly does go on, though it may take mil­lions of years to recov­er. But the cur­rent forms of life may dis­ap­pear before their time. If we want to under­stand what is at stake besides our own frag­ile fos­sil-fuel-based civ­i­liza­tions, we need to con­nect to life emo­tion­al­ly as well as intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Short of globe-hop­ping phys­i­cal immer­sion in the Earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, we could hard­ly do bet­ter than immers­ing our­selves in the tra­di­tion of nat­u­ral­ist writ­ing, art, and pho­tog­ra­phy that brings the world to us.

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (BHL), an “open access dig­i­tal library for bio­di­ver­si­ty lit­er­a­ture and archives,” has for many years been mak­ing it easy for peo­ple to con­nect to nature through nature writ­ing and illus­tra­tion. On Flickr, you can find 319,000 care­ful­ly curat­ed images. The col­lec­tion itself is sub­di­vid­ed into dif­fer­ent pho­to albums drawn from his­tor­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions. For exam­ple, The Fresh­wa­ter Fish­es of the British Isles (1911), The Bird (1869), and The Insect Book (1901).

This image archive offers expan­sive views of human­i­ty’s encounter with the nat­ur­al world, not only through sta­tis­tics and aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but through the artis­tic record­ing of won­der, sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, and deep appre­ci­a­tion. Enter the archive here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and

The Metic­u­lous, Ele­gant Illus­tra­tions of the Nature Observed in England’s Coun­try­side

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Jewelry Designs: From Throbbing Heart Necklaces to Medusa Brooches

in Art, Fashion | December 26th, 2025

Upon hear­ing the name of Sal­vador Dalí, even a total lay­man in the art world is bound to get visions of melt­ing clocks. Sur­pris­ing­ly, for an artist who showed so much self-mar­ket­ing savvy, Dalí nev­er brought an actu­al time­piece in that dis­tinc­tive­ly, even canon­i­cal­ly sur­re­al shape to mar­ket. But that hard­ly stopped Carti­er from putting out the Crash, whose dis­tort­ed shape may have always brought The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry to mind, but whose name hints at the inspi­ra­tion of a watch smashed up in a car wreck. The Crash came out in swing­ing-six­ties Lon­don at its very height, by which time Dalí him­self had been design­ing real jew­el­ry for more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry.

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You can see a few of Dalí’s jew­els in the 1960 British Pathé clip at the top of the post. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, they occu­py a realm apart from, or at least orthog­o­nal to, that of con­ven­tion­al jew­el­ry. Some of them move: Liv­ing Flower, for instance, which “opens to reveal sta­men and petals paved with dia­monds. The mech­a­nism is embed­ded in mala­chite from the Con­go, which to Dalí rep­re­sents the unknown, latent forces, while the gold and dia­mond flow­ers, known beau­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty.”

Angel Cross, by con­trast, embod­ies “the hypox­i­o­log­i­cal con­cept of exis­tence — what­ev­er that means.”  Cer­tain­ly, Dalí nev­er claimed to play to the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the British, though some of them might go in for The Roy­al Heart, with its “pul­sat­ing rubies rep­re­sent­ing our queen, heart beat­ing con­stant­ly for her peo­ple, while the nugget gold sym­bol­izes the peo­ple shel­ter­ing and pro­tect­ing their ruler.”

The seg­men­t’s out­takes fea­ture more footage of these pieces, giv­ing us a longer look at works like The Eye of Time, embed­ded with a small clock signed by Dalí, and the “leaf-veined hands” he described as “reach­ing out to the future.” Oth­er of his vivid jew­el­ry designs include the Medusa brooch, com­plet­ed with a nest of ruby-eyed gold snakes, and a con­struc­tion that lit­er­al­izes — and, at the same time, sur­re­al­izes — the expres­sion “ruby lips and teeth like pearls.” Real­ized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the well-regard­ed jew­el­ers Car­los Ale­many, Eric Ert­man, and Hen­ryk Kas­ton, and often inspired by his wife and muse Gala, they may be over­shad­owed by Dalí’s paint­ings and draw­ings, but haute cou­ture does pay them occa­sion­al homage. What else — indeed, who else — could have inspired the throb­bing heart-shaped rhine­stone neck­lace seen on Schi­a­par­el­li’s mod­els last sum­mer at Paris Fash­ion Week?

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s Sur­re­al Cut­lery Set from 1957

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Sur­re­al­ist Fun­house at New York World’s Fair (1939)

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

Cap­ti­vat­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Cre­ate Gold­en Sculp­tures

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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