Here are few of my favorite recent reads. Library staff would be happy to help you place requests on these or any other titles. If you’d like to place your own request, visit www.newulmlibrary.org and choose Library Catalog. All the Belles are called back to Bellerton Academy following its ...

The first Sunday in November is the time to turn your clocks back an hour. This year, you might want to look back a century, too. The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris ended in November 1925, making art deco, the style it exhibited (not to mention ...

What could be creepier than drinking out of a skull? Porcelain manufacturers in Germany have been making skull-shaped steins for hundreds of years. The one pictured here, which sold for $343 at Fox Auctions, was created by Ernst Bohne Sohne. This company started as a decorating studio in 1848 ...

It’s less than a week away from Halloween. I loved the night as a child. I loved all the preparation that went into finding or making the perfect costume for trick-or-treating each year. As a young mother I think I had even more fun dressing my children for their school parties and a night of ...

Postmodern furniture is a parade of quirky styles and colors, unexpected shapes and materials, and innovative construction. Few designers are more quirky, colorful, or creative than Gaetano Pesce. Like many of the great 20th-century designers, Pesce (1939-2024) trained as an architect and ...

They say that imitation is the highest form of praise, and it follows that the most desirable antiques are often the most reproduced. Take the famous “Wally Birds” made by Martin Brothers of England in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. These fanciful stoneware bird figures with heavy ...