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French vase features unique flower design

Lifestyle Columns

The Daum glass factory of Nancy, France, is famous for its cameo glass, but that isn’t the only kind it made. When Jean Daum founded the factory in 1875, he made cut and enameled glass. His sons Auguste and Antonin started an art glass department in 1885, adapting to the art glass movement and art nouveau style of the time. The company started making more ornate types of glass like cameo glass and pate-de-verre. These were very old techniques, but newly popular as they experienced a resurgence in the 19th century. Pate-de-verre was made in ancient Egypt. The term means “glass ...

New Ulm FSC presents “Little Mermaid on Ice”

Lifestyle Feature

NEW ULM – The New Ulm Figure Skating Club (NUFSC) invites the public to join them under the sea—and on the ice, with the 37 annual ice skating show. This year’s ice show is “Little Mermaid on Ice,” and will feature a full cast skating to the music of the classic Disney version of ...

Wordless picture books

Lifestyle Columns

Did you know that sharing a wordless picture book can be a powerful way to build important literacy skills? Wordless picture books are books without text that rely solely on the pictures to convey the story. They are often dismissed as being too easy for any age reader. But they are outstanding tools to promote comprehension, vocabulary, listening skills, and they aid in the understanding of character development and story structure. A good reader needs good comprehension skills. They need to remember what has already happened and be able to predict what may happen next. Wordless ...

Off the Shelf

Lifestyle Columns

I love a good story! The question that each of us must ask, however, is what makes a story good? Your mind might hark back to lessons in grammar and writing to come up with answers like flowing dialogue, relatable characters, character growth, conflict, an easy to follow structure, and so on. You might also point to less defined things like making you laugh, being unable to put it down, or making you forget the passage of time. All of these can be elements of a good story, and I’m sure you could have several stories come to mind from just these elements I’ve listed. We love hearing ...

One Sock, many talents

Lifestyle Feature

NEW ULM — One Sock, a band based out of Martin Luther College, has had a pretty standard journey for a band started in high school. A few cover performances here, a talent show appearance there. But last year, One Sock took that one step further. One Sock released its album, “Cicero,” ...

Ironstone pottery replacement for Chinese porcelain?

Lifestyle Columns

If you’re familiar with 19th-century ceramics, you probably know about ironstone. It was first made by English potter Miles Mason, who sold Chinese export porcelain and decided to make his own replacements for broken dishes. To make these replacements, he created a ceramic using slag from processing iron, which his son patented as ironstone in 1813. Heavy, durable and hard to chip, it was clearly different from porcelain, but quickly became a favorite for tableware. Many other potteries began making ironstone, especially in the Staffordshire district of England. Albion Pottery, also ...