Sarah Chrisman riding her high-wheel tricycle (Photo: Ester Hyo Gyung Choi)
The Victorian era certainly looks glamorous and interesting on the silver screen, but how would you like to live like people did back then? Author Sarah A. Chrisman and her husband Gabriel did just that, and explained it all in this illuminating article over at Vox:
Every morning I wind the mechanical clock in our parlor. Each day I write in my diary with an antique fountain pen that I fill with liquid ink using an eyedropper. My inkwell and the blotter I use to dry the ink on each page before I turn it are antiques from the 1890s; I buy my ink from a company founded in 1670. My sealing wax for personal letters comes from the same company, and my letter opener was made sometime in the late Victorian era from a taxidermied deer foot.
There are no modern lightbulbs in our house. When Gabriel and I have company we use early electric lightbulbs, based on the first patents of Tesla and Edison. When it's just the two of us, we use oil lamps. When we started using period illumination every day, we were amazed by how much brighter the light is from antique oil lamps than from modern reproductions.
Read the rest over at Vox.
See previously: I'm Living Like I'm In the Victorian Era
The minute hipsters no longer praiser her she'll move on.
I imagine that the experiment will slowly wind down if they decide to have children. Looking at her blog, she apparently gets really freaked out by people who want to touch her, lift up her dress, etc...