The Flower Seller

The Flower Seller - François-Adolphe Grison

Computers

UFO Research Room by Krzysztof Maziarz and Joyce Silva

Vic Cyber Game in Hanoi, Vietnam, designed by Vương Luân Computer

Man From Uncle

1964-1968 Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn, and Illya Kuryakin, played by David McCallum. Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverly, the British chief of the organization. Barbara Moore joined the cast as Lisa Rogers in the final season.

Aphrodite Palace Hotel

Stained-glass cupola ceiling of the Aphrodite Palace Hotel spa in Rajecké Teplice, Slovakia

Aphrodite Palace Spa

Quantum Astronaut Sculpture

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by HOHMANN, Inc. / Hohmann Fine Art (@hohmann.art)

White Linen

View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds - Jacob van Ruisdael 1665

The painting's title takes me to Wikipedia which leads to asking Google about linen bleaching which gets me this:

In 1670, the linen bleaching process was a slow, multi-step photochemical method. Centered in places like Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, it required weeks of washing, boiling in alkaline lye, soaking in massive amounts of sour buttermilk, and prolonged exposure to sunlight on open grass fields (bleachfields).

More from Wikipedia:

The success of the linen-bleaching industry in Haarlem had reached its climax at the time that Ruisdael painted this work. There were other linen-bleaching centers in the Netherlands; however, none of these locations were endowed with the perfect mixture of natural resources that Haarlem had. During the seventeenth century, linen bleached in Haarlem was highly sought after and quite expensive; this was the cause of the economic prosperity in Haarlem and the wealth of Haarlem linen merchants. All linen bleached in Haarlem received the name toiles de Hollande, or "Haarlemmer Bleek," which means Haarlem bleach. Regardless of where the linen was woven, if it was bleached in Haarlem it was called toiles de Hollande.

I thought for sure 'wrapped in white linen' is a line in the song Lucky Man by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but it's not. The line is from The Streets of Laredo by a host or artists.

Construction Physics got me started.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’: A painting depicting the Pau Grand Prix of 1954, shows Jean Behra’s Gordini fending off a strong challenge from Maurice Trintingnant and his Ferrari 500 F2. The nose of Behra’s Gordini bears the evidence of his contact with Farina at the start. Amedee Gordini became known as ‘Le Sorcerer’ because of his uncanny ability to produce, on a shoe-string budget, the most amazing little racing cars. The Gordinis were very fast but also rather fragile and unreliable, probably the result of the team being hopelessly penurious. If success eluded Gordini in the major Grand Prix he would fare much better in the lesser events. These races, still supported by the major teams, were hotly contested and the painting shows Behra winning one of these non-championship contests. - VeloceToday

Pau Grand Prix 1954 - Amateur Film
ourafilmes.com

The engine was 2 Liter DOHC L6 delivering 175 horsepower at 7,000 RPM.

GORDINI T16 6 cylindres 1952

1952 Equipe Gordini T16(F1/F2), 2-Litre Straight 6-Cylinder Double Camshaft Engine

1952 2½ litre straight-6 Gordini Type 16 of Marc Valvekens

Gordini T16, French GP paddock, July 1953, 2 litre straight-six

House Fashions

Airport Commerce Center Sign

We are getting ready to start the 2nd phase of our remodeling project, so we took a trip over to the eastside to visit the Let's Remodel showroom. It's in a strip mall at 122nd & NE Airport Way. Surprisingly, almost the entire mall is given over to construction and remodeling businesses, as you can see from the sign above.

Airport Commerce Center

As you can see it's step up from the typical strip mall - they've added some landscaping.

Crowd Management Services

Next door was this curious sign. Security personnel for your fancy event.

Shower Head Demonstrator

Next stop was Ferguson's Home to pick out some gee-gaws and do-dads. Lot's of very fancy stuff.

Fancy Bathtub

Range with a zillion knobs

Dog washing station

Fancy range with bronze fittings

I don't think we're getting any of this stuff, maybe some new plumbing fixtures. Some people like fancy cars, some people like fancy houses. We can afford this project because I didn't buy a race car. I would kinda like to have a race car, but I really don't have the time for a big new project. I'm busy piddling around with my computer, going out to lunch and watching Netflix in the evening.

Inside or Outside?

Saw his in an ad in a coffee table magazine while I was waiting for my wife to finish perusing the merchandise. When me and the boys go out to lunch we'll eat outside if the place has a patio and the weather is decent. Funny how people are like that. Sunshine and blue skies are wonderful. Of course, good weather brings out the hordes. It'll be nice when it starts raining and all the fair weather fiends crawl back under their rocks and you can drive across town without having to make like a slug.

Vasna at Bombay

Vasna at Bombay - Robert G. Lloyd

Royal Navy Research Archive has a history of this ship as does P & O Heritage.

Artist's website here.

SS Tjitjalengka

SS Tjitjalengka at Amoy Harbor in China - Robert G. Lloyd

Australian War Memorial

The 16,700 ton British hospital ship Tjitjalengka. Built for the Java-China-Japan-Line in 1939 and owned by a Dutch shipping company, the Tjitjalengka was requisitioned for Admiralty service on 8 July 1942 and was converted in Liverpool, England to accommodate 504 patients. After service in the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans, she was transferred to the British Pacific Fleet. After the Japanese surrender, she carried Allied Prisoners of War (POWs) repatriated from Japan to Australia. On her final voyage, she carried invalids and Naval casualties from Colombo and Durban to Liverpool, England and was then returned to her owners.

Royal Navy Research Archive has a longer history of this ship.

The artist, Robert G. Lloyd has done numerous marine paintings.

Tjitjalengka, Indonesia

Amoy Harbor, China is directly across the strait from Taiwan.

The Battle of Terheide by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten

The Battle of Terheide by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten, 1660

From Google:

The Battle of Terheide (also known as the Battle of Scheveningen) was the final, decisive naval engagement of the First Anglo-Dutch War. Fought on August 10, 1653, between the English Commonwealth and the Dutch Republic, the clash successfully broke the crippling English blockade of the Dutch coast, though it cost the Dutch their legendary commander, Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp.

At that time, the population of England was about five million people and the population of the Netherlands was about two million.

From Wikipedia:

Both sides claimed a victory: the English because of their tactical superiority, the Dutch because the strategic goal of their attack, the lifting of the blockade, had been achieved.

Belligerents
English Commonwealth	Dutch Republic
Commanders and leaders
George Monck  Benjamin Blake	Maarten Tromp †
Strength
130 ships[1] 4,000 guns 17,000 men[2]	125 ships[1] 3,450 guns 13,000 men[2]
Casualties and losses
950–1,200 killed and wounded 2 ships lost [1][3]	2,000 killed and wounded 1,000 captured 12-30 ships lost[2][1]

Ter Heijde

Battle of Delaware Bay

Battle of Delaware Bay

The battle was fought on April 8, 1782, months after General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.

Wikipedia: 

The Battle of Delaware Bay, or the Battle of Cape May, was a naval engagement fought between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States during the American Revolutionary War. A British force of three vessels attacked three American privateers that were escorting a fleet of merchantmen. The ensuing combat in Delaware Bay near Cape May ended with the American sloop Hyder Ally capturing the British sloop-of-war HMS General Monk.

Background

Twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Joshua Barney of the Continental Navy commanded the privateer sloop Hyder Ali during the battles. She was owned by Pennsylvania businessman John Willcocks and was issued a letter of marque. The sloop was armed with 16 six-pounders and had a crew of about 110 men, officers and marines, and was named after Hyder Ali, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore and a British enemy.

Hyder Ali? You mean the king of southern India? Yes, that Hyder Ali:

Hyder Ali was an innovator in the military use of rockets, which were used against positions and territories held by the East India Company during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. Although rocket technology originated in China and had made its way to India and Europe by the 13th century, development of accurate cannons had sidelined rockets as a military technology in Europe. Rocket technology was already in use when Hyder's father served (he commanded a company of 50 rocketmen), but it was Hyder who improved them and significantly expanded their use in the military. Technological innovations included the use of high-quality iron casing (better than was then available in Europe) for the combustion chamber, enabling the use of higher-powered explosive charges. . . . Rockets developed by Hyder and Tipu led to a renaissance of interest in the technology in Britain, where William Congreve, supplied with rocket cases from Mysore, developed what became known as Congreve rockets in the early 19th century.

Battle of Pollilur 1780 - Charles H. Hubbell

In Hyder's time the Mysorean army had a rocket corps of as many as 1,200 men, which Tipu increased to 5,000. At the 1780 Battle of Pollilur, during the second war, Colonel William Baillie's ammunition stores are thought to have been detonated by a hit from one of Hyder's rockets, contributing to the British defeat.

Ilyushin DB-3

Ilyushin DB-3

The Ilyushin DB-3 is a WW2 Soviet long-range bomber aircraft. It first flew in 1935. 1,528 were built. 

From Wikipedia:

The DB-3 was not a simple or easy aircraft to manufacture as Ilyushin had pushed the limits of the available construction technology to make it as light as possible. For example, the spar in each wing panel had four parts which had to be riveted together and there were numerous welds that each had to be inspected by an X-ray machine, with many failures. In addition the internal riveting of small-diameter tubing was also a difficult and time-consuming process.

In 1939, 30 DB-3s were supplied to the Republic of China Air Force during the Second Sino-Japanese War and they saw heavy action against Japanese targets in the Wuhan region from their bases in Sichuan (mostly used by the 8th Group), before being replaced by B-24 Liberators in 1943.

Two DB-3s were responsible for shooting down the neutral Finnish civilian Junkers Ju 52 passenger and transport plane Kaleva on June 14, 1940.

The Finns captured five force-landed DB-3Ms during the Winter War and during 1941 they purchased a further six DB-3Ms and four DB-3F/Il-4s from German surplus stocks.

On the night of August 7–8, 1941, fifteen DB-3T torpedo bombers of the Baltic Fleet dropped the first Soviet bombs on Berlin. From August 11, DB-3Fs of the VVS resumed bombing.

DB-3 torpedo bombers attacking a naval convoy in the Baltic
Skyfire

Ilyushin DB-3 & DB-3F(IL-4). WWII
Yolkhere

Cooling Air Intake Restrictor

Finnish Air Force Swastika

The Finnish Swastika is not connected to the Nazis.

Etrich Taube Monoplane

Etrich Taube Monoplane -  Russell Smith

From Wikipedia:

First flight in 1910.

The Etrich Taube, also known by the names of the various later manufacturers who built versions of the type, such as the Rumpler Taube, was a pre-World War I monoplane aircraft. It was the first military aeroplane to be mass-produced in Germany.

The Taube was very popular prior to the First World War, and it was also used by the air forces of Italy and Austria-Hungary. Even the Royal Naval Air Service operated at least one Taube in 1912. On 1 November 1911, Giulio Gavotti, an Italian aviator, dropped the world's first aerial bomb from his Taube monoplane over the Ain Zara oasis in Libya. Once the war began, it quickly proved inadequate as a warplane and was soon replaced by other designs. 

Etrich Taube: The World’s First Plane to Launch an Aerial Bomb
Retro Transport

Handwriting

Key - Ernst Neizvestny - 1984

Meduza got me started with a story about a Russian soldier who was making bank by forging Ernst Neizvestny artworks so naturally I want to see what kind of art he makes. In general, his art seems to be ugly. Kind of a reflection of many aspects of modern life. Doesn't appeal to me.

So who is this Ernst Neizvestny? 

Ernst (1925 – 2016) was a Russian artist . . . He emigrated to the United States in 1976 and lived and worked in New York City.

American playwright Arthur Miller once described Neizvestny as an "artist of the East" who is regarded by Russians as an "expression of the country, of its soul, language, and spirit" and as a "prophet of the future" who represents the "philosophical conscience of his country." . . .

Ernst's great grandfather received his surname, literally meaning "unknown," when he was conscripted for military service as a cantonist.

A cantonist? Look that up in Wikipedia and found this:

Cantonists were underage sons of conscripts in the Russian Empire. From 1721 on they were educated in special "cantonist schools" for future military service . . . The Russian state viewed the cantonist system as an effective means to induce the assimilation of its ethnic minority populations, particularly Jews, who were markedly over-represented within the schools.

Huh, imagine that, assimilation of ethnic minorities was important even back in the 1700s.

Anyway, scrivenery was one of the skills taught in cantonist schools.

A scrivener is a professional copyist or scribe . . . Styles of handwriting used by scriveners included secretary hand, book hand and court hand.

Different styles of handwriting? Well, I'll be. Here we go:

"The secretarie Alphabete": an abecedarium showing the forms of the letters used in secretary hand, from a penmanship book by Jehan de Beau-Chesne and John Baildon, 1570.

Bookhand variations using a Brause 2.5mm nib and Moon Palace ink on Strathmore Drawing 300 paper.

An abecedarium of Court Hand, including minuscule and majuscule letters and syllable variations.

More Tehran

Iranians walk in front of a large anti-US billboard featuring US President Donald Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, at Valiasr Square in Tehran, Iran [File: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA]

Islamic Street Art

A woman in Tehran, Iran, walks past a mural featuring Iranian drones on May 26 [File: Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via Reuters]

I like this picture though I'm not sure why, possibly because we've been watching Tehran and I'm seeing everything through Trumpian glasses.

De Havilland Mosquito

Mosquito Pathfinders by Philip West

Military Gallery:

Groundcrew busy themselves readying their de Havilland Mosquito as the aircrew head out towards the aeroplane for yet another mission to a high value target over occupied Europe during WW2. Their dangerous job as Pathfinders is to accurately mark and bomb the target for the main heavy bomber force. It required great skill in navigation, airmanship and courage. The Mosquito proved to be a real thoroughbred and ideal for many varied combat sorties so earning the nick-name The Wooden Wonder. 

De Havilland Mosquito | In-Flight & Walk Around | Planes of Fame
Planes of Fame

Photo-shoot

Photo-shoot - painting by Graham Turner

From Studio 88:

A BE2e flies over the Western Front on a photo-reconnaissance mission, the pilot operating the lever that would change the glass negative plates in externally mounted C-type camera, while the observer struggles to aim his Lewis gun.

The BE2 was designed as a stable observation platform before the role of the aeroplane in warfare had been properly understood, so was originally completely unarmed. Various rather ‘Heath-Robinson’ gun-mounting brackets were adopted to try to remedy this, but the basic problem of the observer’s very restricted position among the struts and wires can clearly be seen. (Note the alternative gun mounting attached to one of the forward struts. Countless BE2 crews were shot down and killed whilst bravely flying over enemy lines to bring back vital photographs of troop movements, trenches, artillery positions, and other crucial information.

Spaceman

Spaceman

Saw Project Hail Mary for the second time yesterday afternoon, this time at the Fox Tower theater. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I missed (or forgot) from the first time. It's still great.

Immortal Regiment

Bas-relief plaque at the National WW2 Memorial in Washington D. C.
American and Russian armies meeting in Germany at the end of WW2

Several hundred people have taken part in an ‘Immortal Regiment’ march in Washington, commemorating those who fought for the Soviet Union in the Second World War . . . The marches are traditionally held on May 9 in Russia, when the country celebrates Victory Day. In Washington, however, it was staged on Saturday, a week before the 81st anniversary of the end of the bloodiest conflict in history.

Aerial view of the World War II Memorial with the Lincoln Memorial in the background