How Maple Syrup Is Actually Made
In early March, when Vermont daytime temperatures rise above freezing while nights remain below, sugar maples begin pumping sap from roots to branches.
2024-12-16
CA
Catherine Avery
129 articles
Showing 81–100 of 129 articles
How Eyeglass Frames Are Made by Hand in Jura, France
In Morez, population five thousand, in the Jura mountains near the Swiss border, spectacle-making dates to 1796 when a nail-maker bent wire into a frame.
2024-12-04
The Difference Between Machine-Made and Hand-Welted Shoes
The hand-welted shoe and machine-made shoe may look similar on a shelf, but construction methods produce fundamentally different objects.
2024-12-01
How a Handmade Knife Gets Its Edge
At Bob Kramer's studio in Olympia, Washington, a billet of Damascus steel forged from over three hundred alternating layers of high-carbon and nickel steel glows orange at nine hundred degrees.
2024-11-30
The Architecture of Mexico City's Mid-Century Gems
Luis Barragan's Casa Estudio, completed in 1948 in Tacubaya, uses raw concrete, volcanic stone, and walls of saturated colour, including his signature hot pink, to create spaces of extraordinary spiritual calm.
2024-11-29
The Architecture of Barcelona's Modernist Legacy
When Gaudi's Sagrada Familia nears completion, nearly a century and a half after construction began in 1882, it will culminate a period of experimentation that made Barcelona one of Europe's most visually inventive cities.
2024-11-26
The 40-Year Piece of Furniture: What Makes It Worth It
A dining table from Ercol, whose Windsor workshop has produced furniture from English elm and beech since 1920, is built from kiln-dried solid wood with mortise-and-tenon construction.
2024-11-23
The 20-Year Desk: What Makes It Worth It
A writing desk from Pinch Design, crafted in their Somerset workshop from solid walnut or oak, is built for someone who will spend thousands of hours seated before it.
2024-11-23
The 15-Year Overcoat: What Makes It Worth It
A proper overcoat from Crombie or Private White V.
2024-11-21
Inside the Workshop: A Neapolitan Shirt Maker
At the Kiton factory outside Naples, a single dress shirt passes through over forty specialised workers.
2024-11-19
On the Underappreciated Skill of Active Listening
In 1957, psychologists Carl Rogers and Richard Farson published a paper called Active Listening that outlined a communication skill so fundamental it seems absurd that it needs teaching.
2024-11-09
How Gordon Parks Used a Camera as a Weapon Against Injustice
In 1942, Gordon Parks was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship and arrived at the Farm Security Administration in Washington, D.
2024-11-03
On the Moral Weight of Comedy
When Lenny Bruce was arrested on obscenity charges at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in 1964, the prosecution argued that his language was indecent.
2024-10-31
The Ceramic Artists Working in Cathedral-Sized Kilns
In the hills of Shigaraki, Japan, anagama kilns stretch up to twenty metres long, their brick chambers shaped like tunnels carved into the hillside.
2024-10-29
How David Lean Made Landscapes Into Characters
David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, released in 1962, uses the Arabian desert not as a setting but as a protagonist — an antagonist, even, whose vastness, heat, and silence shape T.
2024-10-24
Why Albert Camus Is the Philosopher for Uncertain Times
Albert Camus's central philosophical proposition — that life is absurd, that the universe offers no inherent meaning, and that this condition is not a tragedy but a starting point — has acquired fresh urgency in a period defined by institutional failure, pandemic disruption, and the erosion of certainties that previous generations took as given.
2024-10-18
The Ethics of Collecting Antiquities in the Twenty-First Century
The Parthenon Marbles — removed from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1812, currently housed in the British Museum — represent the most visible case in an ongoing ethical debate that extends far beyond any single collection.
2024-10-16
The Myth of the Tortured Artist and Why It Persists
The Romantic equation of suffering with creativity — the idea that great art requires personal torment — has survived two centuries of contradicting evidence because it serves multiple interests simultaneously.
2024-10-04
Edward Hopper and the Loneliness Worth Sitting With
Nighthawks, painted in 1942 and hung at the Art Institute of Chicago, has been reproduced so often that encountering the original requires a deliberate act of unseeing.
2024-09-29
The Albums That Rewired How Men Listen to Music
Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, released in 1971, represented a categorical rupture in how Black male artists could present themselves commercially.
2024-09-28