Thomsen Chapel, St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle
Church and chapel interiors often express remarkable temporal continuity. They are lovingly maintained by devoted members of an alter guild, dusted and polished but seldom significantly altered. This makes these spaces — sacred on many levels — significant places to feel the presence of the past.
Seafair Cook Book
Cooking from vintage cookbooks brings the past right into the kitchen, and I do so often. Seattle has produced many cookbooks over the past century or so, beginning with the wonderful 1896 Clever Cooking. Until the 1920s, most recipe books could be a bit vague on details — contemporary cooks understood how much dry wood it took to produce a medium-hot oven, or how much sugar ½ a teacup would be. Once the influence of work flow engineer Lillian Gilbreth and cookbook author Fannie Farmer (who advocated standardized recipe measurements) spread, home cooks had an easier time following cookbook recipes.