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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations
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Design and fashion

Sitting on the art

Given its intimacy with the body and deep play on form and function, furniture is a ripely ambiguous artform of its own

Emma Crichton Miller

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Engineering

A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations

9 minutes

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Design and fashion

The ornate, the aromatic, the cruel – Valentine’s cards before the age of Hallmark

16 minutes

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Rituals and celebrations

The spectacular Mardi Gras artworks born of a unique New Orleans tradition

16 minutes

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History of technology

A silken web

From its mythic beginnings in a Chinese garden, the story of silk is a window into how weaving has shaped human history

Peter Frankopan, Marie-Louise Nosch & Feng Zhao

Two sphinx-like statues foreground an intricate formal garden of geometric hedges and a square pond. In the background are cherry trees in bloom
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Nature and landscape

The mystic art of gardening

In an era of 20th-century suburban sprawl, the great designer Russell Page infused soulful philosophy into his gardens

Caleb Smith

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Design and fashion

From spark of inspiration to final press – how William Blake built a book of poetry

8 minutes

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Design and fashion

The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays

14 minutes

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Architecture

Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China

16 minutes

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Design and fashion

The art of Istanbul dances to life in a tribute to the city’s timeless beauty

4 minutes

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The ancient world

What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia

16 minutes

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Design and fashion

Refined towards imperfection – a ceramic artist recreates a rare Korean treasure

15 minutes

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Design and fashion

Household items are reborn in a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’

11 minutes

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Design and fashion

From sheep to sea – an ode to the iconic sweater that warms Cornish sailors

4 minutes

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Animals and humans

Semiotics of dogs

In all its baroque and sometimes cruelly overbred forms, the dog is a paramount symbol of both human hopes and foibles

Katrina Gulliver

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History of technology

Unravelling the surprisingly epic story of the world’s oldest pair of trousers

45 minutes

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Design and fashion

The Waste Age

Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future

Justin McGuirk

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Information and communication

There are many ways to make a flat map of the world – each of them a unique distortion

10 minutes

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Design and fashion

Gear up for a stylish celebration of vintage motorcycle design

6 minutes

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Home

How our rooms shape our world, and vice versa

3 minutes

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Mathematics

Delight as the hard-edged world melts into a full-rainbow spectrum of reality

2 minutes

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Design and fashion

Pre-Hispanic and colonial traditions combine in Mario’s uniquely Mexican artworks

6 minutes

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Engineering

Simple objects make for epic art installations of sound and movement

20 minutes

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Design and fashion

The only thing more entrancing than a marbled book cover is the process that creates it

13 minutes