In the latest installment in the Behind the Design program series. Curator Andrea Lipps, conservator Jessica Walthew, and Stamen Design’s founder and creative director Eric Rodenbeck discuss Watercolor Maptiles—a web-based, open-source mapping tool that displays OpenStreetMap’s data with the hand-hewn textures of watercolor paint. Launched by Stamen Design in 2012, Watercolor Maptiles is part of...

How did road trips and X-rays lead to acquiring an exceptional eighteenth-century armchair originally made in Mexico? Journey with us to discover the design history of this fascinating object that responds to Englishman Thomas Chippendale’s influential pattern book Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, published in 1750. While artisans from across the Atlantic adapted Chippendale’s patterns to...