Casting Dress

Casting Light On Relief Map Shading

Felix Frey | Swiss National Museum | 9th January 2024

In 1927, Albert Heim denounced Switzerland’s official maps for a “lie that flew in the face of nature”: mountains were shaded as if lit from the northwest, where factually in Switzerland the sun shines from the south. The convention arose from the convenience of right-handed illustrators, as revealed by older maps where east is on the left and south is at the top but the shading stays the same (1,100 words)

The Dress Form

Kathryn Hughes & Lauren Kane | New York Review | 13th January 2024

Clothes tell a life through “the wearer’s engagement with their own arrangement of sinew and muscle, and the accommodations they’re obliged to make with the wider world”. George Eliot claimed her right hand was larger due to “all the milking she had done on her father’s farm”. Jane Austen’s coat-dress shows she “wasn’t simply tall; she was gigantic”, which is why she would only wear flat shoes (2,500 words)