Explosions in the Sky

Most of us don’t really understand how mirrors work, which makes for some fun reflective deception. By Susana Martinez-Conde, Stephen L. Macknik.

Once the source of the country’s most coveted china, Jingdezhen is attracting artists from around the world to study its hallowed porcelain traditions. By Edward Wong.

Marise Williams on the work of artist, jeweller and taxidermist Julia DeVille.

“The officers made their way down to the pair of moonshiners and went through the typical rigmarole of an arrest, everything they’d been taught. But before they started busting up the still with the axes they’d brought along, Rusty Hanna said something that caused all parties to freeze: ‘Now we’re gonna cook some whiskey.’” By Phil McCausland.

Poetry shows us that the world is more varied and unpredictable than we might otherwise imagine. By Fiona Sampson.

We present a compiler that can automatically turn assemblies of high-level shape primitives (tubes, sheets) into low-level machine instructions.

When I saw Davide Taub’s clothes, I was struck with desire. I sensed that wearing one of his garments would make me a different person. By Akhil Sharma.

“Pretty much every job there—from sweeping the floor all the way up to installing the soundboard or performing final tone regulation—requires attention to detail.” Photography by Christopher Payne, story by Jordan G. Teicher.

In 1999, while taking a break from my PhD to try to get rich in the fine jewellery business, I nearly became the world’s largest counterfeiter of Fabergé eggs. It all started in Arlington, Texas, where my brothers and I owned several jewellery stores. Boris, an alcoholic Russian ex-pat who’d been with us for years, came into my office one January morning... By Clancy Martin. (Feb. ’09)

Tanya Harrod reviews Peter Korn’s “Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education Of A Craftsman” and Emma Crichton-Miller et al’s "Edmund De Waal.”