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Tea and the British Empire

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Is there any drink more associated with an elegant British party than tea? I don't think so. I mean an afternoon meal in England is still frequently referred to as "Tea". And especially when we're talking about historical Britain and the regency and Victorian eras, tea is extremely prevalent and iconic! But what is the real history of tea and the British empire? Tea is a drink that originated in a region in modern-day northeastern Burma and southeastern China. During the Tang dynasty it became increasingly popular and spread to other East Asian countries. It was not until the 16th century that tea spread to Europe and it was not until the 17th century that tea first spread to England. Tea was not a widespread drink in Britain until the 18th century remaining very expensive until the second half of the century.  Twinings opened the first British tea room in 1706 In the 18th century, tea was only grown in China and it was the top Chinese import to Britain, over silk and...
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A Brief Discussion of the Elgin Marbles

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Hello Friends! Today I want to go more in depth on a topic I gloss over in my  video introduction  to the Regency era. Greek and Roman statues and styles were hugely influential to the fashions of the regency era in dress, beauty, and intellectual pursuits. Most notably, the so-called "Elgin marbles" were hugely inspirational to fashionistas of the day. But what are the Elgin marbles? Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803.   At this time Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire and while posted in Turkey, Bruce requested support from the British government to hire artists to draw and document the statues of the Parthenon. When the government refused he decided to undertake this work himself. In the summer of 1800, artists he had hired began to make drawings and take casts of the extant marble statues. Regardless of what his original intentions may have been, by 1801, Lord Elgin began to remove statues from the Parth...
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Remaking Old Clothes 1: Black Dress

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Hello! With all of this time in lock down I have had a lot of time to think, as I'm sure so many of us have. One thing I've thought about a lot is the clothing industries impact on the environment and on the people who are extremely underpaid and overworked in order to make fast fashion clothing items. This is a huge awful, global problem and one person is certainly not going to solve it. But I thought about how I could minimize my own personal impact and if many of us try to do even a little better, perhaps together we could make a truly meaningful impact on these problems.    So in service of that goal, I have decided to try to make as much of my wardrobe myself as possible and what I cannot make I will buy from manufacturers who use ethical practices in their business. I have also decided to try to remake clothes that I would otherwise have to throw away due to wear, poor fit, or some other problem that means it cannot be donated or re-sold. I am by no means an expert seams...
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So What is this All About?

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Hello all and welcome to the blog! Anachronous means something that belongs to an earlier time period but is being used now. It is another way of saying old fashioned, but has the distinct advantage of also being a pun on my name.  My name is Ana and I grew up in a small rural town before moving to Seattle to attend the University of Washington.  A slightly out of date picture of me While there I studied molecular biology and I am very passionate about science. But I am also passionate about exploring how things were done in the past and how we might learn some lessons that are useful to apply to our modern life. This was in large part inspired by my Gran who taught me a lot about old ways of doing things. Her tips were especially useful for a college student on a budget as she was born in 1930 just after the start of the Great Depression and knows a lot about making a budget stretch. She encouraged me to cook from scratch rather than buying premade things, which is both cheap...
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