A Weekend in San Sebastián
San Sebastián — Donostia in Basque — may be the finest eating city on earth per capita.
2025-02-17
OR
Oliver Ramsey
123 articles
Showing 61–80 of 123 articles
A Weekend in Lisbon
Lisbon announces itself through light.
2025-02-12
The Wine Regions Every Man Should Know
You do not need to memorize every appellation in France to speak intelligently about wine.
2025-02-08
What Apprenticeship Models Can Teach the Modern Workplace
Germany's dual apprenticeship system, in which young people split time between vocational school and workplace training for three to three and a half years, produces some of the world's most skilled workers and is credited with Germany's manufacturing dominance and youth unemployment around six percent, among Europe's lowest.
2025-02-04
How a Single Anvil Gets Passed Through Five Generations of Smiths
In a forge in Shropshire, an anvil bearing the stamp of Mousehole Forge, Sheffield, dated 1847, still rings under the hammer of its fifth-generation owner.
2025-01-03
The Luthiers of Cremona and Their Unbroken Tradition
Cremona, a small city on the Po River in Lombardy, has produced stringed instruments of unsurpassed quality since Andrea Amati established his workshop around 1550.
2024-12-28
What Watchmakers and Surgeons Have in Common
Both professions demand the ability to work for extended periods at magnification, manipulating objects smaller than a grain of rice with instruments that extend the hand's precision beyond its natural limits.
2024-12-27
How Heritage Rope Makers Supply Modern Sailing Yachts
Chatham Dockyard's ropery, established in 1618 to supply the Royal Navy, stretches a quarter mile in length, making it one of the longest brick buildings in England.
2024-12-26
The Printmaker Still Setting Type by Hand in Brooklyn
In a Red Hook warehouse where the air smells of mineral spirits and machine oil, printer Ben Blount operates Blackbird Letterpress with cases of metal type cast decades ago.
2024-12-26
The Wheelwright's Tools Haven't Changed in Three Hundred Years
Greg Rowland, one of the last working wheelwrights in England, uses a traveller, a spoke shave, and a drawknife that would be immediately recognisable to a wheelwright from the early seventeen hundreds.
2024-12-23
The Japanese Joinery Technique That Uses No Nails or Glue
In the seventh-century Horyuji temple complex in Nara, Japan, wooden columns and beams have stood for nearly fourteen hundred years without a single metal fastener.
2024-12-21
The Bookbinder Who Turns Damaged First Editions Into Heirlooms
In a Mayfair workshop no larger than a generous living room, Shepherds Bookbinders has been restoring and rebinding volumes since 1847.
2024-12-20
What a Master Ceramicist Sees in a Lump of Clay
When Edmund de Waal picks up a handful of porcelain clay, he is holding a material that has captivated artisans for at least twenty-six thousand years.
2024-12-19
The Science of Tempered Steel and Why Your Kitchen Knife Matters
A blade forged from properly tempered steel can hold a cutting edge through ten thousand slices of a tomato without dulling appreciably.
2024-12-19
The Art of Hand-Engraving on Metal
At Marcus Hunt's workshop in the English Midlands, a steel graver is pushed across a shotgun receiver, removing a fine curl of metal to create lines of microscopic precision.
2024-12-05
The Architecture of Copenhagen's New Minimalism
When Bjarke Ingels' 8 House was completed in Orestad in 2010, its figure-eight form allowing residents to bicycle from ground level to the tenth-floor penthouse announced a new direction.
2024-11-27
The 25-Year Leather Jacket: What Makes It Worth It
A leather jacket from Schott NYC, the company that produced the original Perfecto in 1928, begins as full-grain horsehide or steerhide from American tanneries.
2024-11-20
Inside the Workshop: A Venetian Glassblower
On Murano in the Venetian lagoon, furnaces at Seguso Vetri d'Arte burn at approximately eleven hundred degrees Celsius.
2024-11-19
Inside the Workshop: A Swedish Cabinetmaker
In Stockholm, cabinetmaker David Ericsson works from a studio where hand tools line the walls and templates hang like musical instruments.
2024-11-18
Inside the Workshop: A Japanese Denim Weaver
In Kojima, Okayama Prefecture, vintage Toyoda shuttle looms from the 1950s weave selvedge denim at roughly fifteen metres per hour, a fraction of modern projectile looms.
2024-11-16