Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Tweet I don’t know how I missed the original announcement of the auction of the diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring Napoleon gave to Josephine, but I’m quite disappointed. I would have loved to own this piece of history! It was sold by the Osenat auction house in France, and I have to admit that the final, anonymous [...]
Continue reading about But I Wanted This! Napoleon and Josephine’s Engagement Ring
Monday, February 4, 2013
Tweet A lot of my jewelry is inspired by royalty, but I focus on females: queens, empresses, queen consorts, princesses. I figure history as it is taught in elementary and high school is basically about men, so I prefer to concentrate on herstory. However, I have a soft spot for one dude: England’s 15th-century Richard [...]
Continue reading about The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Tweet My non-New Year’s Resolution — going into effect immediately — is to better organize my calendar. I tend to keep too much information in my head or in email, thinking, “There’s no way I can forget about something as important as that!” Then, of course, I miss or almost miss the event. It happened [...]
Continue reading about Resolved: Keep Track of Important Dates
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Tweet I like art and I like history, but sometimes one distracts me from the other. I started writing a post about a painting I have in my apartment, so I took a picture of the wall where it was hanging. That made me think of Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, the name by which [...]
Continue reading about Up Against My Wall, Sarah Ashley Longshore!
Monday, February 13, 2012
Tweet If you’ve been reading my blog long enough, you’ve seen my gold and diamond Cleopatra earrings on Kim Cattrall in Sex and the City 2. And you’ve seen the silver version on a flock of bloggers and friends. Now you can see the silver Cleos on gorgeous model/DJ/musician/actress Tolula Adeyemi. Tolula was introduced to [...]
Continue reading about Valentine’s Day Countdown, Day 13: Earrings Fit for a Queen
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Tweet I ripped out this small Reuters item from the New York Times on February 15, as a reminder that freedom of speech isn’t to be taken for granted: Syria: Teenage Blogger Sentenced to 5 Years A teenage blogger, brought into court chained and blindfolded, was sentenced Monday to five years in jail on charges [...]
Continue reading about Syria Is in Vogue, Teen Blogger Is in Jail
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tweet “The devil is in the details” normally means that the biggest challenges of a project are contained in its smaller elements. But I always think of the expression in relation to the personal stories told by or of the victims of catastrophic events. Such is particularly the case for me today, the anniversary of [...]
Continue reading about Thoughts on 9/11: The Devil Is in the Details
Friday, April 16, 2010
Tweet For this post, the fourth and final one on my favorite history book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitious 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman, I wish I had a deep-voiced television announcer to say, “Previously on Wendy Brandes Jewelry …” and give a summary of the three preceding posts. Since I don’t have that guy, [...]
Continue reading about Book Club: A Distant Mirror, the Finale
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Tweet Today is a day for celebration: it is the one-year-and-one-day procrastination-versary of my introduction to my favorite history book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. On March 26, 2009, I posted about A Distant Mirror and told you to come back the next week for more. I wrote a long [...]
Continue reading about Book Club: A Distant Mirror, Part II
