Laura Jean Allen rose to fame by the time she was 30 as an illustrator for Seventeen magazine and designer of clothing and cosmetic compacts for teenaged girls. She became involved with Associated American Artists in the early 1950s and was soon one of the group’s most prolific textile designers. Upon the 1954 release of...

This colorful piece from ancient Egypt is actually only a fragment of what would have been a larger funerary mask, meant to adorn a mummy in preparation for the afterlife. The fragment depicts typical funerary iconography and adornment, including chest pectorals and a type of broad necklace called a wesekh collar (meaning ‘breadth’ or ‘width’),...