M.J. Rose

So stunning, so poignant.

Imprisoned in Ash: The Plaster Citizens of Pompeii

By Atlas Obscura/Salon

“Those that did not flee the city of Pompeii in August of 79 AD were doomed. Buried for 1,700 years under 30 feet of mud and ash and reduced by the centuries to skeletons, they remained entombed until excavations took place in the early 19th century…”

Click here for a gallery of incredible photographs of the plaster casts, and links to more about the world’s hidden wonders.

A beautiful representation of the theory of four-dimensional space….

(When we think of the “tesseract” we are reminded of our favorite books of childhood, A Wrinkle In Time.)

“A series of images from Charles Howard Hinton’s The Fourth Dimension (1904), a book all about the “tesseract” – a four-dimensional analog of the cube, the tesseract being to the cube as the cube is to the square. Hinton, a British mathematician and science fiction writer, actually coined the term “tesseract” which appears for the first time in his book A New Era of Thought (1888). We are not going to pretend to have given the time to his book to understand fully the concept behind these diagrams, but they are a fascinating series of images all the same (particular the coloured frontispiece featured above), and offer a glimpse into the theory of four-dimensional space which would prove so important to the development of modern physics. Although Hinton’s work was an important stepping stone in understanding four-dimensional space, the real breakthrough came in a 1908 paper by Hermann Minkowski, in which four-dimensional space was thought of in non-Euclidean terms, leading to the revolutionary concept of “spacetime”…”

More here. And many extremely strange and wonderful diagrams!

So delicate, so creepy, so beautiful. Is is Halloween season yet? We can’t wait…

Japanese Artist Carves Pearls Into Skull Jewelry

(Bored Panda)

“Shinji Nakaba is a Tokyo-based jewelry designer who’s been creating since 1974. Everything he makes is wearable, and Nakaba often uses unconventional materials to create his pieces. These intricately carved pearl skulls are an example of his exceptional work.

“I just want to bring brand new life to something that has no value,” Nakaba tells Magnifico. “I use not only precious metals and stones, but also everyday things, such as aluminum beer cans, plastic bottle, or even garbage,” he explains on Etsy.

“Vanitas” is carved into many of Nakaba’s skulls. This is Latin for “vanity,” and is likely a reference to 16th-17th century funerary art. Work of this type emphasized the meaninglessness of earthly life “and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.”…

For more photos, click here.