Have you ever wondered where you could find a spotted, two-legged creature with the body of a lizard, the ears of a goat, the wings of a bird and the claws of a chicken?  How about a monster with the head of a dolphin, ears of acanthus leaves, the body of a snake, and a tail...

This week’s entries are dedicated to objects featured in the exhibition Thom Browne Selects, currently on view at Cooper Hewitt through October 23, 2016. Venetian glass-making is not the only tradition observed in this engraved mirror, although engraved mirrors were popular there for both domestic and religious use in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This...

Romeo and Juliet’s story is known across the world, but what about the tale that serves as the foundation for Shakespeare’s work? Ovid’s Metamorphosis tells the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe; like Romeo and Juliet, these two were young lovers forbidden to wed because of a long-standing rivalry between their families. Their love grew through...

From computers to cellphones, Twitter to Facebook, the typed word dominates our daily life. With the increasing proliferation of digital technologies, access to writing has become almost universal.  In the 17th century, however, writing was a skill reserved for an educated subset within the European population. Calligraphy, referred to as the “Tenth Muse,” was considered...