Selection
A chair with a way back.
A familiar café chair makes a larger point: lasting value needs a practical route back into use.
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Art & Culture
Works, artefacts, knowledge and ideas that enlarge how we see.
Image: Walters Art Museum / CC BY-SA 3.0 (opens source in a new tab)IN THIS AREA
- Art, books & unexpected artefacts
- Living craft & cultural knowledge
- Scientific objects & enduring ideas
Readings & discoveries.
Discovery · Textile Art & Geometric Craft
The geometry you can hold.
Temari turns a small sphere into a complex field of stitched geometry. In the Sanuki tradition, the materials beneath the pattern are part of the achievement.
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Discovery · Wood Mosaic & Decorative Arts
The picture inside the wood.
Tunbridge ware builds images from small pieces of wood rather than painting them onto a surface. A nineteenth-century watch box turns that technique into something unexpectedly useful.
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Discovery · Natural-History Books & Visual Culture
A book that changes the scale of looking.
Kunstformen der Natur gives unfamiliar organisms an extraordinary graphic presence. Its plates invite close looking, while its historical authority requires a more critical eye.
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Discovery · Korean Textile Art & Everyday Use
The pieces become the composition.
Jogakbo turns joined pieces of cloth into a deliberate arrangement of colour and seams. Kang Keum Seong’s documented work shows how that language can enter everyday objects.
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Discovery · Botanical Art & Close Observation
She built the flower from paper.
Mary Delany’s Botanical Study is not simply a painted flower. Its paper construction turns close looking into a material practice, begun when the artist was already in her seventies.
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Discovery · Ceramic Art & Living Workshop Knowledge
The third firing that changes the light.
Deruta’s lustre maiolica adds another transformation after the glazed object seems complete. The historical plate is a starting point for understanding a technique still taught and practised.
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Discovery · Public Sculpture & Material Invention
The steel that was shaped by air.
Oskar Zięta’s NAWA turns inflated steel into a place to walk through. A manufacturing experiment becomes a changing encounter with a city, rather than an object behind glass.
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Discovery · Public Art & Material Reconsideration
The material you recognise too late.
Bordalo II’s Half Rabbit makes an animal appear from discarded things on a corner in Gaia. The second look, when the materials become recognisable, is where the work begins.
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Discovery · Books & The Art of Printing
When the whole book is the work.
The Kelmscott Chaucer makes type, illustration and the printed page inseparable. Its lesson is available through close looking, even when the original is far beyond reach.
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Discovery · Kinetic Art & Spatial Sound
A sculpture that takes time.
FLIGHTGRAF’s LOOP makes light move through physical space. Its forthcoming collaboration with HAL ca offers a contemporary reason to think about value that depends on attention rather than possession.
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Discovery · Art Glass & Material Intelligence
When the irregularities are the point.
Christopher Dresser’s Clutha glass allows colour, streaks and the character of molten material to become the ornament. A small historical object opens a large design question.
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Image: © Hiroshi Sugimoto / Object © Christian Dior Couture collection, Paris (opens source in a new tab)Discovery · Photography & The Afterlife of Fashion
When a dress becomes sculpture.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Stylized Sculpture changes how a garment is seen. His 2026 Dior photographs turn historical couture into a study of form, light and human absence.
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Discovery · Contemporary Paper Sculpture
A forest, folded by hand.
Naoki Onogawa builds tree-like sculptures from tiny folded cranes. Look closely and a familiar silhouette becomes an accumulation of individual acts.
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Discovery · Photography & Artistic Collaboration
A photograph through someone else’s glass.
For Hikari, Kensaku Kakimoto photographed through glass works by Ritsue Mishima. The glass is not only the subject. It becomes part of how the image is made.
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Discovery · Contemporary Sculpture & Industrial Craft
The factory inside the sculpture.
Jobe Burns’s Laying Vessel carries metalworking knowledge into contemporary sculpture. The contrast between its rusted shell and red interior is only the beginning.
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Discovery · Fibre Sculpture & Material Intelligence
A vessel made mostly of air.
Gjertrud Hals’s Scala gives thread a sculptural presence. Open structure, rather than a solid wall, allows the vessels to occupy space.
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Discovery · Glass Art & Living Design
An old outline with a new surface.
The 2026 Aalto Bubble Vase keeps a familiar contour but changes the way light moves through it. The anniversary is less interesting than the glassmaking.
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Discovery · Lacquer & Artistic Reinvention
The sea, painted in lacquer.
Shibata Zeshin used lacquer for more than the surface of a box. A late panel of breaking waves shows a craft changing the scale of its ambition.
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Discovery · Contemporary Craft & Material Transformation
The knot made from leather and lacquer.
Nan Wei’s Knot-Loving looks unexpectedly solid. Its red, looping form begins with cow leather, linen and lacquer rather than ceramic or carved stone.
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Discovery · Cut Glass & Contemporary Craft Collaborations
The cut that becomes light.
A 2026 TOKIMEKI collaboration places Shimadzu Satsuma Kiriko glass above a machined metal base, giving the cut surface a different role in a room.
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Discovery · Murano Glass & Living Craft
The glass that catches the light.
Venini’s Tiara Luce uses a quilt-like glass surface to make light tangible. A traditional forming technique becomes something encountered in an ordinary evening.
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Discovery · Contemporary Woodcraft & Expanded Scale
The bucket you can step inside.
Shuji Nakagawa scaled the logic of a wooden bucket into a tea room. The result asks whether a declining everyday craft can find a larger future without losing its structure.
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Discovery · Contemporary Tapestry & Image Translation
A film frame becomes a tapestry.
At Aubusson, a scene from Spirited Away becomes a monumental woven image. The unexpected discovery is the new work required when an animated world must be rebuilt in thread.
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Discovery · Decorative Arts & Contemporary Material Collaboration
The wall between velvet and metal.
Levantina brings Tessitura Bevilacqua velvet into Materica’s metal-surface world. Its appeal lies in the friction between two material traditions, not a generic claim of Venetian luxury.
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Image: Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón / LOEWE Foundation (opens source in a new tab)Discovery · Collaborative Basketry & Architectural Memory
A village woven from above.
Frafra Tapestry turns an aerial reading of a Ghanaian settlement into woven elephant grass. The result is a collaboration between design drawing, architectural memory and the knowledge of named master weavers.
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Discovery · Contemporary Crystal & Authored Surface Work
Crystal that carries handwriting.
Harry Nuriev’s 2026 Baccarat collection interrupts the formality of cut crystal with words and drawn gestures. The encounter is worth reading through the actual workshop processes, not the collaboration label alone.
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Discovery · Kumiko Woodwork & Contemporary Screens
The pattern is the joinery.
Tanihata’s kumiko screens make a geometric pattern from fitted pieces of wood rather than a surface decoration. Light passes through the result, making an old joining skill useful in contemporary rooms.
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Discovery · Jasperware & Material Invention
The colour is in the clay.
Wedgwood’s jasperware can look familiar enough to escape a second glance. Its more surprising story begins beneath the white relief, in an experimental ceramic body rather than painted blue decoration.
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Discovery · Contemporary Terracotta & Sculptural Process
Clay that keeps the pressure visible.
Kunimasa Aoki’s Realm of Living Things 19 looks almost geological. Its layered terracotta makes pressure, shrinkage and the risk of firing part of the finished sculpture rather than defects to erase.
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Discovery · Florentine Hardstone Inlay & Living Workshops
The colour is already in the stone.
In commesso fiorentino, a vein in a stone can become fur, a petal or a distant hill. The surprising art is not painting on minerals, but finding the picture within them and fitting its pieces together.
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Discovery · Experimental Ceramics & Collectible Craft
Porcelain with the memory of paper.
Jongjin Park’s Strata of Illusion won the 2026 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. Its chair-like form begins with layered paper and porcelain slip, then lets the kiln alter the architecture.
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Discovery · Crystal Sculpture & Living Manufacture
The dance still being made.
René Lalique’s Bacchantes began in 1927 and remains a living design. The revealing part is how a ring of figures moves between mould, handwork, satin surface and light.
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Discovery · Jaipur Blue Pottery & Material Knowledge
The blue pottery that starts with quartz.
Jaipur blue pottery begins with a surprising material recipe. Beneath the painted surface is a quartz-rich body and a sequence of skilled decisions worth knowing.
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Discovery · Japanese Prints & The Art of Looking
The same boats in a different light.
Hiroshi Yoshida’s Sailing Boats changes atmosphere without abandoning its subject. Reusing woodblocks with different colours reveals how much of a place is made by light.
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Discovery · Bizen Ceramics & Firing Knowledge
The kiln that makes the surface.
Bizen pottery offers another way to read a vessel. Clay and firing can create a complex surface without applied glaze, making the kiln part of the work rather than just its final destination.
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Discovery · Ebru & Marbling Traditions
The picture before the paper.
In ebru, a picture takes shape on a prepared liquid surface before it reaches paper. The lasting object preserves a fleeting arrangement and the knowledge that allowed it to happen.
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Discovery · Oaxacan Woodcarving & Living Workshops
A world carved in copal.
Jacobo and María Ángeles’ workshop turns copal wood into tonas and nahuales. Carving, painted pattern and shared knowledge make the work more than a colourful animal.
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Discovery · Natural History & Illustrated Books
The living world on a printed page.
Maria Sibylla Merian’s 1705 Suriname book brings plants and insects into a shared visual world. A public-domain plate makes close study possible without owning an early edition.
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Discovery · Talavera & Living Ceramic Craft
A plate worth looking at.
Uriarte’s bird plate is a modest entry into Puebla’s Talavera tradition. A current object can open a larger conversation about clay, painting and certification.
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Discovery · Netsuke & Miniature Sculpture
The sculpture that held a cord.
Masakazu’s small wooden monkey in The Met is a reminder that a netsuke began with a job. Function and invention can fit in one hand.
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Discovery · Turned Wood & Living Folk Craft
The doll whose head has a voice.
A Naruko kokeshi is turned, fitted and painted by a maker. The small sound at its neck hints at a whole craft tradition.
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Discovery · Metal Inlay & Material Transformation
The silver is not the whole story.
In Bidriware, silver becomes luminous because of the dark metal around it. The making changes the way an object is read.
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Discovery · Painted Ceramics & Living Craft
The blue begins in black.
At Royal Delft, a painter works in black and the kiln brings out the blue. The process helps you distinguish a hand-painted object from a familiar-looking surface.
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Discovery · Shadow Puppets & Performing Traditions
The object is only half the art.
A wayang kulit puppet is made to move, cast a shadow and carry a voice. Its cultural value cannot be separated from the people who bring it to life.
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Discovery · Printed Textiles & Design Archives
A pattern with an afterlife.
William Morris’s Strawberry Thief travels easily between an archive and everyday life. The important distinction is between the age of a design and the age of an object.
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Discovery · Etchings & Edition Literacy
The print is not just the image.
Piranesi’s imaginary prisons turn a sheet of paper into an impossible interior. They also teach a precise distinction between an image, a print and its state.
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Discovery · Photography & Scientific Archives
A seaweed album made with sunlight.
Anna Atkins made botanical evidence into an extraordinary blue book. Its most accessible value is still the way it teaches us to look.
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Discovery · Woodblock Prints & Living Craft
The Great Wave, made again by hand.
An Adachi reproduction of Hokusai’s Great Wave offers an honest route to owning the work of living carvers and printers, without pretending it is an Edo-period impression.
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Discovery · Writing Instruments
Namiki: a surface worth slowing down for.
Namiki’s vermilion No.20 turns an everyday gesture into an encounter with Japanese lacquer.
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Discovery · Glass & Everyday Design
The detail at the bottom of the glass.
Adolf Loos’s 1931 glassware hides its most elaborate work where you might least expect it.
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On the calendar · Contemporary Lacquer
Light held in lacquer.
Keiji Onihira’s small makie box makes a changing natural scene visible through layers of lacquer and metal powder.
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Discovery · Contemporary Craft and Interiors
A home woven into a wall.
The Frafra Tapestry project translates a family compound in northern Ghana into a work woven by the people who know its spaces.
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Discovery · Rare Books & Maps
When the world became a book.
Ortelius’s 1570 atlas shows why an old map’s identity matters as much as its beauty.
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Discovery · Decorative Arts
The woman behind the Wisteria lamp.
Clara Driscoll’s design offers a more precise way to see one of Tiffany Studios’ most recognisable lamps.
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Discovery · Rare Books
Before you call it a first edition.
Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared in 1859. So did copies that are not the first edition. The book teaches us how bibliographic evidence works.
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Market reading · Alternative Assets
The catalogue that became collateral.
In 1997, future royalties from David Bowie’s existing songs became the cash flow behind a bond. The idea is stranger and more useful than the nickname.
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Discovery · Rare Objects
A window into an asteroid.
Olivine crystals suspended in metal: the Imilac meteorite makes deep time visible at the scale of an object.
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Market reading · Alternative Assets
Beyond the record price.
A quieter market can reward a more exacting eye. What a broad collectibles index can and cannot tell us.
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