Madonna Dolorosa, Mater Dolorosa, or Lady of Sorrows: Naples, Italy

More from Italy, as I sort through my thousands of photographs: I don't know much about the top piece, but I am guessing it is a 18th or early 19th century Madonna Dolorosa, Mater Dolorosa, or Lady of Sorrows, a popular motif in Naples; we spotted it at one of the many antiques shops we popped into on our trip. The bottom image is my own Madonna Dolorosa, made by the workshop of Giuseppe and Marco Ferrigno, a studio which continues to create--by hand!--fine Baroque-style crèches and terracotta figures of the sort for which Naples is still, rightrully, renowned.

Click on images to see much larger, finer images.

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" Like Victorian Baby Talk: Edison's Monstrous Talking Doll, circa 1890

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like Victorian baby talk. Especially when it sounds like this.

More, from the Go Report website:

While we may never know what the ‘must have’ Christmas gift was in 1890, we do know that it most assuredly wasn’t Thomas Edison’s talking doll.

Using miniature phonographs embedded inside, these “talking” baby dolls were toy manufacturers’ first attempt at using sound technology in toys. They marked a collaboration between Edison and William Jacques and Lowell Briggs, who worked to miniaturize the phonograph starting in 1878.

Unfortunately, production delays, poor recording technology, high production costs, and damages during distribution all combined to create toys that were a complete disaster, terrifying children and costing their parents nearly a month’s pay.

Edison would later refer to the dolls as his “little monsters.”

To hear this wee monstrous baby reciting, we are led to believe, "Little Jack Horner," click here. To read the entire story from which the above excerpt is drawn, click here. Sound from Archive.org.

Thanks to my lovely friend Matt Murphy for this charming holiday tale about a rare Edison commercial misfire.