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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Image: Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón / LOEWE Foundation (opens source in a new tab)
THE WHV WORLD
Knowledge & Craft
Understanding, skill and the work of continuity.
Our perspective on Knowledge & Craft
THE QUESTION WE BRING
What knowledge is being kept alive, and what does it allow people to do?
OUR FIELD OF VIEW
- Living craft traditions
- Useful bodies of knowledge
- Makers and their methods
Each selection begins with a specific subject, a reason to care and evidence worth examining.
In view.
Discovery
The work inside a bell’s voice.
At the Paccard foundry museum near Annecy, a familiar sound becomes a made object. Casting, tuning and maintenance reveal why a bell’s long life depends on more than bronze.
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Discovery
The garden that starts with the ground.
Beth Chatto’s gardens teach a form of judgement that travels home with the visitor. Begin with the conditions you have, then discover what can flourish there.
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Discovery
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
The porcelain waiting for another table.
At Kouraku Kiln in Arita, a basket and a warehouse turn ceramic discovery into a hands-on experience. The best find may be something you will actually use.
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Discovery
The collection you can hear.
At Cremona’s Museo del Violino, historic instruments sometimes leave silence behind. A short listening session can make a celebrated name less abstract.
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Discovery
The cask made for a successor.
Behind the conspicuous Louis XIII decanter is a quieter story about coopers, old oak vessels and making something whose most important use lies decades ahead.
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Discovery
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
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
The axe you learn to make.
A short course at Gränsfors Bruk changes the relationship between a tool and its owner. The object becomes a record of decisions you have begun to understand.
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Discovery
A city within the books.
At Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconcelos, suspended bookshelves make knowledge feel like a landscape you can enter.
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Discovery
The car as a new composition.
Singer’s Carrera Coupe does not preserve a 911 by leaving it untouched. It makes the boundary between restoration and reinterpretation worth examining.
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Discovery
An archive you can wear.
John Lobb’s 2026 revival of the Lazenby shows how an archive can supply something more useful than a retrospective exhibition.
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Discovery
The workshop behind the reels.
The Revox B77 makes recording physically visible. Its stronger claim to longevity lies beyond the turning reels, in a manufacturer that still restores its older machines.
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Discovery
The name behind the cellar.
Lustau’s Fino del Puerto gives José Luis González Obregón a place on the label. The fraction beneath the name points to a solera, not a numbered luxury edition.
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Discovery
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
A day inside the work of looking.
Paranal’s public tours make the infrastructure behind extraordinary astronomical images tangible. The visit is about how looking is made possible, not a private night at a giant telescope.
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Discovery
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
The note does not end at the key.
Expressive E’s Osmose keeps the familiar piano keyboard but makes pressure and sideways movement part of the sound. The instrument rewards what happens after a note begins.
Read the noteImage: Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón / LOEWE Foundation (opens source in a new tab)Discovery
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
A flower made twice.
Guerlain’s Muguet 2026 brings two kinds of interpretation together. Lily of the valley is reconstructed as a scent and made visible through Atelier Vermont’s pleated silk and embroidered flowers.
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Discovery
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
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
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
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
Come home with a better question.
CERN’s Science Gateway offers a different kind of exceptional day out. Interactive experiments make the hidden structure of matter something to investigate, without promising a visit inside the Large Hadron Collider.
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Discovery
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
The vineyard woven against the wind.
Santorini’s low, coiled vines are more than a striking landscape. The kouloura makes a practical response to wind and sun visible in the wine’s agricultural life.
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Discovery
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
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
The country inside the Panama hat.
The so-called Panama hat leads back to Ecuador and the work of toquilla weavers. Looking beyond the familiar name reveals an agricultural material, regional skills and a form made to be worn.
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Discovery
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
The grain inside the tradition.
Redbreast 12 offers an approachable route into a distinctive Irish whiskey tradition. Malted and unmalted barley make the story more interesting than a trophy release.
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Discovery
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
The mosaic you learn to see.
A five-day mosaic course in Ravenna turns looking into making. Cutting and placing a small piece of glass can change how a visitor reads an entire wall.
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Discovery
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
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
The work behind the gondola.
A pause across the canal from Squero di San Trovaso shifts Venice from postcard to workshop. Boats need a place, tools and knowledge to continue working.
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Discovery
The library that lets you make.
Helsinki’s Oodi offers books, workshops, studios and public rooms. The unusual value is how much a city lets people do without owning the building or equipment.
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Discovery
The hat after its first shape.
Borsalino’s felt-hat workshop explains what can happen after wear changes a hat. Blocking and repair make the next chapter more concrete.
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Discovery
A season in a glass.
Tío Pepe en Rama 2026 turns attention to a moment in the cellar. The spring cask selection opens a conversation about flor, timing and the people choosing the wine.
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Discovery
A skill you can build.
A dry-stone walling course turns a landscape feature into a skill you can practice. The value is in the work learned, not only the scenery.
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Discovery
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
The type you can rearrange.
A two-day Center for Book Arts workshop turns wood type into prints that participants exchange and remake. The encounter leaves a method, not only a souvenir.
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Discovery
Furniture that can change its mind.
The useful part of USM Haller is what happens when the room changes. A familiar storage system can be configured for another chapter.
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Discovery
A garment with a family memory.
A Hardanger bunad can carry regional skill and family history into the present. The work of fitting and keeping it matters too.
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Discovery
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
The picture seen from the other side.
A guided visit to the Gobelins workshops can change how a tapestry is read. The work is as revealing as the finished image.
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Discovery
Arithmetic you can turn in your hand.
The Curta makes calculation physical. Turn a crank and a remarkable compact mechanism does what a screen now hides.
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Discovery
The architecture below your feet.
At Rani-ki-Vav in Gujarat, the descent toward water became architecture and sculpture. The old practical purpose still changes how we read it.
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Discovery
The value between the beads.
An akoya strand invites comparison across each pearl. Lustre, surface and matching matter more than a single impressive number.
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Discovery
The work before the fermentation.
Daishichi Junmai Kimoto asks us to look before the finished drink. Its starter method makes microbial knowledge part of the flavour story.
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Discovery
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
A garden you can take home as knowledge.
Great Dixter teaches a garden as a changing sequence. Its lesson can matter long after a day among the borders.
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Discovery
A pen for the next bottle of ink.
The Pelikan M800 makes refilling part of the object. The interesting question is not how impressive a pen looks, but what keeps it in your hand.
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Discovery
The car and the route back.
The first Mazda MX-5 has something more useful than a nostalgic following: a documented factory restoration story. Its limits matter too.
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Discovery
The years before release.
Château Musar Red spends years in the cellar before it reaches the shelf. Its value is easier to understand by following the decisions in that interval.
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Discovery
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
A place that makes room for listening.
At Green Bank Observatory, switching off a device has a scientific purpose. A visit reveals the infrastructure behind our ability to notice faint signals.
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Discovery
An old keyboard with new sounds left.
The Yamaha DX7 is often treated as the sound of the 1980s. Its more enduring idea is that a familiar machine can still be a place to invent.
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Discovery
A boat that can come apart.
The Klepper Aerius separates a boat into a frame and a skin. That changes both how you keep it and what may be possible when one part wears out.
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Discovery
The boot after the first sole.
Red Wing’s Iron Ranger makes the next sole part of the ownership question. The useful detail is construction, not the romance of a worn boot.
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Discovery
The cane before the cask.
Rhum J.M Blanc 50° offers a different entry into rum. The source of interest is fresh cane and distillation, not an impressive age statement.
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Discovery
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
The pattern begins before the dye.
In Arimatsu, tying a small piece of cloth can change how you read an entire textile. The experience makes patient preparation visible.
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Discovery
A machine for a first draft.
The Olivetti Lettera 22 makes writing a physical sequence of decisions. Its design history matters, but a working keyboard matters more.
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Discovery
The place woven into the cloth.
Harris Tweed’s Orb tells a more useful story than a vague claim of heritage. It connects cloth to a defined place and method of making.
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Discovery
The time before you buy.
Viña Tondonia White Reserva asks you to reconsider what a white wine can be. Much of its story has already happened before the bottle reaches your table.
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Discovery
The value of a used tool.
An Opinel No.6 makes a modest proposition: useful material, a legible mechanism and a blade whose life depends on care.
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Discovery
The value of staying in class.
The Nordic Folkboat offers a different ownership idea: a modest sailing boat supported by shared rules, accumulated knowledge and people who keep using the design.
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Discovery
The work before the bottle.
Springbank’s interest begins on the malting floor in Campbeltown. Its core ten-year-old is a doorway into a production culture, not a reason to chase a resale price.
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Discovery
The workshop behind the journey.
A journey on the Ffestiniog Railway becomes richer when the steam locomotive is understood as the output of a living workshop, not a survivor running on nostalgia.
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Discovery
A lamp with a lifetime route back.
The Anglepoise Original 1227 connects a familiar silhouette to something less visible: a way to keep it working.
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Discovery
The jacket you do not have to replace.
Barbour’s wax-jacket repair and re-wax service turns the marks of use into a maintenance question, not an automatic shopping prompt.
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Discovery
Madeira without the auction room.
Blandy’s 10 Year Old Malmsey is an obtainable way into a wine culture shaped by time, blending and a very different relationship with ageing.
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Discovery
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
Come home knowing what a pot asks of you.
An adult throwing course at the Leach Pottery in St Ives offers something more durable than a souvenir: a different understanding of the handmade.
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Discovery
Nagra IV-S: the recorder as an instrument.
A portable stereo tape recorder from 1971 makes precision visible, but its real appeal depends on more than watching the reels turn.
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Discovery
A salt factory with a second life.
At Arc-et-Senans, Claude Nicolas Ledoux gave salt production the presence of a monumental civic project. Today you can walk into its unfinished argument.
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Discovery
The Citroën DS still asks a different question.
The DS made comfort an engineering ambition. A surviving example only keeps that promise when the less photogenic work has been done.
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Discovery
Pleats that give the body room.
Pleats Please Issey Miyake made a manufacturing decision into a different relationship between clothing, movement and everyday care.
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Discovery
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
Step aboard a working piece of history.
A voyage aboard Bessie Ellen brings a former trading ketch into the present through the work of sailing her.
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Discovery
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
The Elise that makes less feel like more.
The first Elise 111S has a specific engineering identity. Buying one well requires an equally specific reading of the car.
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Discovery
Can Lis: a house you can learn from.
You do not need to own Jørn Utzon’s Mallorcan house to take something lasting from it.
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Discovery
A jewel designed to need one pair of hands.
Hemmerle’s Harmony begins with a practical gesture, then makes room for extraordinary material combinations.
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Discovery
A yacht for the places a deeper keel passes by.
The Bestevaer 36 makes access, shelter and a specific kind of sailing more interesting than size.
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Discovery
A night inside an architectural idea.
At La Tourette, a former friar’s cell offers a way to encounter Le Corbusier’s architecture at the pace of a stay.
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Discovery
A crystal between you and the stars.
The Takahashi FC-100DZ makes an unusual material useful in a very ordinary ambition: seeing more.
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Discovery
What a suitcase needs after the first journey.
The interesting part of this green case is not a famous traveller. It is the material and the route back to repair.
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Discovery
The place where a cognac grows older.
Hine’s Early Landed tradition asks a better question than age alone: where did the years happen?
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Discovery
The tool that can give other things a future.
A bronze smoothing plane earns its place through the surfaces it makes and the skill it invites.
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Discovery
A sculpture you play with wet fingers.
The Cristal Baschet makes the boundary between musical instrument and sculpture feel surprisingly unnecessary.
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Discovery
Turn the world the other way up.
A handmade globe makes the familiar map strange again, without changing the planet.
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Discovery
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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Discovery
The bottle after the perfume.
Perfumer H separates the life of a fragrance from the life of the vessel that holds it.
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Discovery
The back that kept the camera useful.
Hasselblad’s CFV 100C gives a classic V System camera a serious digital future without erasing what made it distinct.
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Discovery
What an old bottle needs.
Penfolds’ recorking clinics turn an ageing bottle into a question of condition, custody and informed intervention.
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Discovery
A different idea of a bicycle.
The Moulton NS D-Pylon makes compact wheels, suspension and a separable frame part of one enduring engineering idea.
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On the calendar
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
The aircraft that still has a job.
The DHC-2 Beaver remains compelling because its shape follows a real mission and an active support system still exists around the type.
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Discovery
A ruin made room for living.
Astley Castle lets people inhabit a protected ruin because the new architecture makes its losses visible rather than pretending them away.
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Discovery
Two balances, one conversation.
F.P. Journe’s current Chronomètre à Résonance turns the interaction between two regulators into the reason for the watch.
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Discovery
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
The value beneath the bark.
Herdade da Baliza shows why productive land should be read through ecology, operating decisions and public scrutiny, not acreage alone.
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Discovery
Dorade was not finished racing.
A historic yacht returned to ocean racing through restoration, preparation and a decision to use her again.
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Discovery
Where vanished perfumes can still be smelled.
At the Osmothèque, preserving a perfume means keeping an experience available, not simply saving its name.
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Discovery
The chair with an order card.
A Nakashima chair invites two kinds of looking: at the wood itself, and at the record of its making.
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Discovery
The vintage Yquem chose not to make.
The absence of a 2012 Château d’Yquem reveals something important about the standard behind the name.
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Discovery
The watch that came home to set itself.
Breguet’s Sympathique paired a pocket watch with a clock that could correct its time mechanically.
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Discovery
A house designed around a life.
At E-1027, Eileen Gray made furniture, privacy and the movement of daily life part of the architecture.
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Discovery
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
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
The Stradivari valued for what survives.
The Messiah’s extraordinary condition makes it a witness to its maker, without settling which violin sounds best.
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Discovery
The silk that remembers.
A damaged Fortuny Delphos gown has recovered its extraordinary pleats. The repair reveals how much knowledge can live inside a surface.
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Discovery
A clock wound by the room.
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos draws energy from small changes in temperature. In 2026, an old mechanism becomes a new object of art.
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On the calendar
What a bowl can hold.
More than 200 works bring Lucie Rie and Hans Coper back into the same rooms. A chance to learn how two quiet forms changed British ceramics.
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Discovery
The Toyota that changed the question.
The 2000GT changed what a Japanese sports car could mean. Its WHV case combines a small production run, technical ambition and an unusual route back to genuine parts.
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Discovery
The other life of Chartreuse.
Chartreuse V.E.P. begins with the familiar green liqueur and gives selected liquid much longer in wood. A bottle where time needs careful reading.
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Discovery
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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Discovery
The Black Shadow and the paper trail.
A 1952 Vincent Black Shadow carries matching numbers, a restoration file and four-owner history. The model name is only the first line.
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Discovery
A small glass tube with a long afterlife.
Western Electric still makes the 300B electron tube. A component from 1938 asks what real continuity in audio manufacturing looks like.
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Market reading
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
The inn that counts what stays.
Fogo Island Inn turns a remarkable building into a harder question: how much value remains in the place that creates the experience?
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Discovery
The bag with a way back.
The Hermès Kelly is famous for its outline. Its more useful lesson is that construction, care and skilled repair decide whether an object can have another life.
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Discovery
The camera built around a mount.
The Leica M3 arrived in 1954 with a new bayonet mount and rangefinder system. Its lasting importance lives in a working ecosystem, not a shelf.
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Discovery
The stool built from one bend.
Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60 has stayed in production since 1933 with three legs, a round seat and one structural idea worth repeating.
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Discovery
The piano that is not furniture.
A Steinway Model D may dominate a room, but its value is decided at the keyboard, inside the action and through the care that keeps it responsive.
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Discovery
The house that needs its caretakers.
Fallingwater’s extraordinary relationship with its landscape also explains why enduring architecture depends on less visible work.
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Discovery
A castle built to understand.
A medieval watermill rebuilt from archaeological evidence reveals what Guédelon preserves: knowledge that must be practised to stay alive.
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Discovery
A superbike with a way back.
To help keep the RC30 on the road, Honda had to recover more than spare parts. It had to recover the knowledge of making them.
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