By Ben Marks — During Queen Victoria’s long and productive reign, from 1837 to 1901, countless buildings, books, and pieces of furniture were erected, written, and manufactured. Though the monarch did not invent Queen Anne Revival style, pen , or decree that otherwise comfortable sofas should be crowned with unyielding rims of carved hardwood, causing untold bumps on untold numbers of unsuspecting noggins, we routinely classify this varied output as Victorian Architecture, Victorian Literature, and...

Original Catfluencer: How a Victorian Artist's Feline Fixation Gave Us the Internet Cat

By Lisa Hix — Louis Wain—an illustrator who boosted the popularity of cats at the turn of the 20th century—is a meme. If you search his name online, you'll find the "famous series" of eight colorful drawings, at least six of which feature a cat, looking progressively more "psychedelic," long before taking psychedelic drugs was a fad. It's true that the drawings were made in the 1920s and 1930s, after the artist had been committed to a mental hospital at age 63. But the meme’s assertion that the vivid...

Cartoon Kittens and Big-Eyed Puppies: How We Bought Into Processed Pet Food

By Ben Marks — Warren Dotz collects the stuff most people treat like garbage. In years past, he’s gravitated to the noisy graphics of firecracker wrappers printed in places as far-flung as Macau and Manila, as well as the vividly illustrated, deity-drenched matchbox covers of India. These paper products, which normally make a one-way trip to the rubbish bin after their contents have been set aflame, are then meticulously cataloged and organized into handsome little books, transforming trash into...

Coveting The Craziest Cat-People Collectibles

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — The memes are endless—Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, Keyboard Cat, Maru, and all the Lolcats. Last year even witnessed the first ever Internet Cat Video Festival at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, with more than 10,000 people in attendance. Maybe it's the culmination of living with domesticated kittens for thousands of years, or perhaps it's due to an insidious epidemic of feline-hosted Toxoplasmosis. Regardless, we're having a cat moment. And the cat-fatuated are no longer afraid to show their...