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Objects & Curiosities

Stereoscopes, chatelaines, mourning lockets — the ingenious, beautiful and faintly peculiar things Victorians touched every day.

The Victorians' VR headset: twin photographs that snapped into startling 3D.

Before the phone call, there was the card: tiny engraved rectangles that ran Victorian social life.

A housekeeper's keys, a lady's jewels: the jingling chain that said who ran the house.

Jewelry woven from a loved one's hair: the Victorians wore grief beautifully.

The Netflix of 1850: painted glass slides projected huge for gasping audiences.

The Victorian Instagram: pocket-sized portraits, collected, traded, and obsessed over.

Edison's talking machine: the first device that could capture a human voice — and play it back.

Half-hunter, full-hunter, and an Albert chain: the machine every Victorian gentleman carried.