Paul Kutchinsky's ambition to create the world's largest jeweled egg was driven by a desire to showcase British craftsmanship on a global stage, competing with the legendary Faberge eggs.
Iceboxes were large lined, insulated wooden cupboards built to store ice, food, and drinks. The ice would usually be placed on the upper shelf, with the food and drinks below, and the cool air from the melting ice would help to keep everything nice and chilled.
"In many ways they've become part of the visual landscape of the vintage market, particularly online, where speed often replaces connoisseurship," says Rodrigo Fernández, director and cofounder of Diez Company.
Journey426 is a Chinese toy photographer and custom figure artist with a focus on Dragon Ball Z, Berserk, and other anime/game collectibles, creating hyperrealistic setups and custom paint jobs that make plastic figures look like professional photography subjects.
In the digital world that we're in, you know, negative videos are what goes viral. People are always knocking people down a peg and it's really easy to fall into that. If something bad happens-which, when you own your business, something bad happens every day- it's easy to circle in despair. But my challenge is to look for the positive and figure out how to pivot, and if something isn't working then figure out a different way to get it done.
Glass demands immediacy. Working at temperatures above 2,000°F leaves little room for overthinking, so the process becomes a kind of live dialogue between material, colour and chance. That same immediacy informs what I'm drawn to as a collector: works that carry a decisive gesture, a tactile presence, and the feeling that they could only exist in one form.
In 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. The Amistad, ruled 7-1 in favor of a group of illegally enslaved Africans who were captured off the U.S. coast after seizing control of a Spanish schooner, La Amistad. The justices ruled that the Africans should be set free.
Mattel operates dozens of brands under its corporate umbrella, each with their own visual identity and brand voice. But, until now, Mattel has never had its own proprietary typeface for its overarching brand, instead opting to license multiple existing fonts on a global scale—an endeavor that was not only expensive, but also came at the cost of visual consistency across Mattel's many product lines.
First, you probably have to rewire the lamp. Unless the seller already did it for you, it's best to rewire any vintage finds so you know they've been safely updated. The process isn't that hard, but you will need to buy the supplies and spend the time to do it correctly.
The result, shaped by industrial designer Jerry Manock and powered by Wozniak's engineering genius, was the Apple II: a smooth, warm-beige enclosure that suggested domesticity rather than machinery. It belonged on a desk the way a telephone did. That calculated approachability helped sell millions of units across sixteen years of production.
If you open your kitchen cabinets and want to run away screaming from the tumbling and entropic heap of half-used packages - and you're starting to consider dropping a whole paycheck at The Container Store to finally fix your life (for real this time) - Wait! Let us share with you a far cheaper and more whimsical solution: vintage tea tins.
It's a doll, Ineke Schmelter, 71, often says as she walks down the street with a pram and someone peers fondly under the hood, asking: How old is the baby? Then she pulls back the blanket and reveals the doll. She points out the craftsmanship the little veins, the creases in the skin and explains that it can take as many as 20 layers of paint to achieve such a lifelike finish.
Other than wanting to preserve a vintage piece for nostalgic or aesthetic reasons, some vintage cookware sets can be worth a fortune these days. But even if you don't have a full set or plan to cash in on your cookware later, part of the charm of vintage kitchen items is their lasting durability combined with their often whimsical and colorful designs or features.
This short captures Tim Bovard, the staff taxidermist for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, as he reflects on over five decades spent perfecting his craft. Sparked by a childhood fascination with the museum's dioramas that never faded, Bovard has devoted his career to shaping what he calls the 'illusion of life' - a process that requires both scientific precision and imaginative interpretation.
My father kept manuals for products we hadn't owned in years, filed alphabetically in a cabinet. When I asked why, he looked at me like I'd suggested burning money. "What if we need to look something up?" The concept of finding any manual online in seconds just doesn't compute for a generation that had to rely on these paper lifelines.
One of the most powerful moments in the creative process is seeing an idea transform into something real. For a child, that moment carries even greater weight. It builds confidence, validates imagination, and reinforces the belief that creativity is not limited by age. Chair for Kids, a participatory design project developed by Taekhan Yun, captures this experience by translating children's playful and imperfect drawings into fully functional and usable chairs that children can see, touch, and use every day.
When baking cookies, there is one particular old school kitchen tool that boomers love. This tool is none other a vintage cookie press. If you're not familiar with what it is, a cookie press is handheld gadget, perfect for making spritz and other retro Christmas cookies. It has a hollow tube that holds cookie dough, and a plunger that you use to push the dough through patterned disks. The result are fun-shaped cookies ready for baking.
Sentimental Value is very much a film about a house - a Victorian " dragestil," or "dragon style," home in Oslo where generations of the same family have lived for more than a 100 years. Director Joachim Trier, who found the house in Oslo's Frogner neighborhood, called its role in the film "a witness of the unspoken ... a witness of the 20th century."
We might be exposed to more ads and commercials today than ever before in human history, but the idea of advertising itself is certainly not a new concept. According to Instapage, the first signs of advertisements actually appeared in ancient Egyptian steel carvings from 2000 BC. Meanwhile, the first printed ad was published in 1472, when William Caxton decided to advertise a book by posting flyers on church doors in England.
As someone who loves vintage things, you can find me at my local thrift store regularly. I enjoy stocking my closet with secondhand finds and finding gifts or unexpected storage gems instead of buying them new. The thrill of the hunt is ultimately what keeps me going back time after time. Whether I have 10 minutes or an hour to peruse, flipping through clothing racks and scouring the shelves always brings me joy,
Picture this: you're knee-deep in renovation dust, crowbar in hand, when something unexpected tumbles from behind century-old plaster. A yellowed envelope? A strange metal box? That moment when your heart skips because you realize you might have just found something extraordinary. For some lucky homeowners, these discoveries turn out to be worth thousands of dollars, transforming a simple home improvement project into an unexpected treasure hunt.
In Lana Launay's Kinship series, light does more than illuminate space. It acts as a living archivist, revealing, preserving, and narrating stories embedded within inherited textiles. Through works such as Kinship I and Kinship II, the artist transforms antique doilies, lace fragments, and stockings passed down through generations into sculptural lighting forms that do not simply display history but actively project it into the present.
When was the last time you saw an ashtray filled with stubbed-out Marlboros at a friend's apartment? At a restaurant? For some of us, the answer may very well be "never." Maybe that's the charm of the International Museum of Dinnerware Design's new exhibition on ashtrays - invoking an era before health codes and Mayor Bloomberg. Or reaching back even further, when you might see a Similac-branded ashtray in the office of your OB/GYN.