

Rebecca Onion
Joined: Feb 21, 2014
Rebecca Onion is a writer and academic living in Philadelphia. She runs Slate's history blog, The Vault.


Ancient Greek Curse Tablet

Show & Tell: A Needlepoint Map Sampler

Show & Tell: A Mermaid Helmet
Show & Tell: Rococo Microscope
Made for an aristocratic amateur scientist who might have used it to explore his collection of natural specimens.
Show & Tell: Ford Model T Ignition Key
Starting a car used to take technical smarts and physical strength.
Show & Tell: Wanted Posters from 19th Century Nova Scotia
A scrapbook that gives us a snapshot of the way the international pursuit of criminals functioned during the Victorian era.
Show & Tell: 1920s Cigarette Cards Depicting Flappers Dressed as Butterflies
Artists of the 1920s found the flapper-butterfly analogy too bewitching to resist.
Show & Tell: A 19th Century Chatelaine
This beautiful ornament told the world that a woman took her domestic responsibilities seriously.
Show & Tell: A Map of Matrimony
Maps like this one translated the fraught journey from courtship through marriage into geographical features.
Show & Tell: Visconti Tarot Cards
Created by a paranoid duke, these cards were used for entertainment, not mystical divination.
Inuit Snow Goggles
A creative, and decorative, solution for preventing snow blindness.
Show & Tell: Powder Horn Map
Men once etched diary entries, rhymes, and souvenir maps on the horns used to carry their gunpowder.
Show & Tell: An Antique Love Token From a Broken Heart
Intricate, decorated "puzzle purses" were a feature of late 18th and early 19th century American courtship.
Show & Tell: 17th-Century Falcon's Hood
An ornate—but very necessary—item for a sport enmeshed in Britain's social hierarchy.
Show & Tell: The Blaschka Glass Flowers
They tend to provoke disbelief, but these 19th century marvels really are made of glass.