What Industrial Looms Lost When They Gained Speed
In 1785, Edmund Cartwright patented the power loom, an invention that would increase weaving speed by a factor of forty within a century.
Thomas Nakamura · 2026-05-27
Craft
Artisanal traditions, maker culture, and the handmade.
Showing 81–100 of 167 articles
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-27
How One Danish Workshop Makes Furniture to Last Two Centuries
PP Mobler in Alleroed, Denmark, has produced Hans Wegner's furniture designs since 1953, and the workshop guarantees that a chair made today will remain structurally sound for two hundred years.
Thomas Nakamura · 2026-05-27
The Chemistry Behind Vegetable-Tanned Leather
Walk into a vegetable tannery and the first thing that strikes you is the smell: rich, earthy, faintly sweet, and utterly unlike the chemical sharpness of a chrome-tanning facility.
Catherine Avery · 2026-05-27
A Violin Restorer's Guide to Listening with Your Hands
John Dilworth, one of London's most respected violin restorers, often works with his eyes half-closed.
Marcus Wei · 2026-05-27
The Blacksmith Forging Door Hardware for Europe's Oldest Hotels
When the Hotel and Gasthof zur Goldenen Sonne in Landshut, Bavaria, needed replacement hinges for doors that had swung since 1490, they turned to a blacksmith whose forge sits barely twenty kilometres away.
Thomas Nakamura · 2026-05-27
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-27
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-27
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-27
The Ceramic Glazes That Take Six Months to Perfect
At his studio in Mashiko, Japan, potter Shoji Yamaguchi maintains a glaze notebook spanning thirty-seven years and over four thousand test tiles.
Daniel Hurst · 2026-05-27
How a Defunct Railway Workshop Became a Furniture Atelier
When the Great Western Railway works at Swindon closed in 1986, it left behind a cathedral of industrial space: soaring iron-framed buildings with clerestory windows, concrete floors scored by decades of heavy machinery, and an overhead crane system capable of lifting steam locomotives.
Daniel Hurst · 2026-05-27
The Last Saddlemaker in the Rhône Valley
In Hauterives in the Drome department of southeastern France, Jean-Pierre Marchand operates the last traditional saddlery in the Rhone Valley.
Daniel Hurst · 2026-05-26
How Carbon Fibre Is Redefining Luxury Pen Design
In 2017, Graf von Faber-Castell introduced a carbon fibre barrel pen that weighed just nineteen grams yet possessed the structural rigidity of aerospace-grade aluminium.
Marcus Wei · 2026-05-26
The Cooperage That Supplies Half of Scotland's Whisky Barrels
Speyside Cooperage in Craigellachie, Scotland, repairs and assembles roughly one hundred and fifty thousand casks every year, making it the largest working cooperage in the world.
Catherine Avery · 2026-05-26
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-26
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-26
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How One Family Has Repaired the Same Cathedral's Stonework for Six Generations
Since 1843, the Rattee family and their successors at Rattee and Kett have maintained the stonework of England's great ecclesiastical buildings, with particular devotion to the colleges and chapels of Cambridge.
Thomas Nakamura · 2026-05-26
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-26
Brass, Bronze, and the Chemistry of Metals That Age Well
Walk into any Georgian townhouse and you will find brass door furniture that has spent two centuries developing a patina no chemical treatment can replicate.
Thomas Nakamura · 2026-05-26
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.
Oliver Ramsey · 2026-05-26
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