Discover J.R.R. Tolkien’s Personal Book Cover Designs for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

in Art, Books, Design, Literature | September 3rd, 2026

In some rare cas­es, adap­ta­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of a lit­er­ary work can sur­pass the source. Despite hun­dreds of valiant efforts on the part of fans, film­mak­ers, game/toy design­ers, and radio pro­duc­ers, this has nev­er been true of the ful­ly-real­ized fan­ta­sy world in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy (not that it’s ever been anyone’s intent). As we not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, Tolkien’s fic­tion­al world is so intri­cate, its sources so vast and var­ied, that Corey Olsen, “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” has made it his entire life’s work to open that world up to stu­dents and curi­ous read­ers, such as with his eight-part lec­ture series on The Hob­bit.

One might also add illus­tra­tors to the list of Tolkien inter­preters above who have—in the almost nine­ty years since The Hobbit’s pub­li­ca­tion and more than sev­en­ty years since the first appear­ance of The Lord of the Rings trilogy—done their best to visu­al­ize Tolkien’s world. But per­haps no one did so bet­ter than the mas­ter him­self. Long known as a visu­al artist as well as a lit­er­ary one, Tolkien left behind over 100 illus­tra­tions for The Hob­bit, one of which adorns 2011’s Harper­Collins 75th anniver­sary edi­tion of the book. He also cre­at­ed these orig­i­nal cov­er designs for each book in The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy.

In the long and com­plex pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry of Tolkien’s most famous of works, it’s unclear if these designs ever made it onto books pub­lished dur­ing his life­time, but the sig­il in the cen­ter of The Fel­low­ship of the Ring design (above), with its omi­nous eye of Sauron sur­round­ed by elvish runes and topped by the one ring, did grace the ele­gant, min­i­mal­ist cov­ers of the first edi­tion of the tril­o­gy. Tolkien’s art­work received a thor­ough treat­ment in a 1995 mono­graph J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illus­tra­tor, which cov­ers over 60 years of Tolkien’s life as an artist, and the mag­ic of flickr brings us this com­pendi­um of Tolkien illus­tra­tions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

The Art of the Book Cov­er Explained at TED

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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Milton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Celebrated Designer Dispenses Wisdom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

in Creativity, Design, Life | September 1st, 2026

“None of us has real­ly the abil­i­ty to under­stand our path until it’s over,” the cel­e­brat­ed graph­ic design­er Mil­ton Glaser mused less than a minute into the above video.

The late Mil­ton Glaser’s many con­tri­bu­tions to pop culture—the I ❤ NY logo, the psy­che­del­ic por­trait of a rain­bow-haired Bob Dylan, DC Comics’ clas­sic bul­let logo—con­ferred unde­ni­able author­i­ty. To the out­side eye, he seemed to have a pret­ty firm han­dle on the path he trav­eled for lo those many decades. Aspi­rant design­ers would do well to give extra con­sid­er­a­tion to any advice he might have shared.

As would the rest of us.

His “Ten Things I Have Learned,” orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as part of a talk to the AIGA—a ven­er­a­ble mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion for design professionals—qualifies as sol­id life advice of gen­er­al inter­est.

Yes, the Inter­net spawns bul­let-point­ed tips for bet­ter liv­ing the way spring rains yield mush­rooms, but Glaser, a self-described “child of mod­ernism,” did not truck in pithy Insta­gram-friend­ly apho­risms. Instead, his list was born of reflec­tion on the var­i­ous turns of a long and most­ly sat­is­fy­ing cre­ative career.

We’ve excerpt­ed some of his most essen­tial points below, and sug­gest that those read­ers who are still in train­ing give spe­cial empha­sis to num­ber sev­en. Don’t place too much weight on num­ber nine until you’ve estab­lished a sol­id work eth­ic. (See num­ber four for more on that.)

MILTON GLASER”S TEN RULES FOR WORK AND LIFE (& A BONUS JOKE ABOUT A RABBIT).

1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE

Some years ago I real­ized that… all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client.

2. IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB

Here, Glaser quotes com­pos­er John Cage: Nev­er have a job, because if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age. 

3. SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

Glaser rec­om­mends putting a ques­tion­able com­pan­ion to a gestalt ther­a­py test. If, after spend­ing time with that per­son “you are more tired, then you have been poi­soned. If you have more ener­gy, you have been nour­ished. The test is almost infal­li­ble and I sug­gest that you use it for the rest of your life.”

4. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH (or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT)

Glaser con­cedes that a record of depend­able excel­lence is some­thing to look for in a brain sur­geon or auto mechan­ic, but for those in the arts, “con­tin­u­ous trans­gres­sion” is the qual­i­ty to cul­ti­vate. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not allow for that because trans­gres­sion has to encom­pass the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure and if you are pro­fes­sion­al your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat suc­cess. 

5. LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE

I have an alter­na­tive to the propo­si­tion that I believe is more appro­pri­ate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Style change is usu­al­ly linked to eco­nom­ic fac­tors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when peo­ple see too much of the same thing too often.

7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

The brain is the most respon­sive organ of the body…. Thought changes our life and our behav­ior. I also believe that draw­ing works in the same way…. Draw­ing also makes you atten­tive. It makes you pay atten­tion to what you are look­ing at, which is not so easy.

8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY

One of the signs of a dam­aged ego is absolute cer­tain­ty. Schools encour­age the idea of not com­pro­mis­ing and defend­ing your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usu­al­ly all about the nature of com­pro­mise…. Ide­al­ly, mak­ing every­one win through acts of accom­mo­da­tion is desir­able.

9. IT DOESN’T MATTER

Glaser cred­its essay­ist Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging (misiden­ti­fy­ing the title as Aging Grace­ful­ly) with help­ing him artic­u­late his phi­los­o­phy here.  It doesn’t mat­ter what you think. It does not mat­ter if you are late or ear­ly, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stu­pid. If you were hav­ing a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cock­eyed or your boyfriend or girl­friend looks at you cock­eyed, if you are cock­eyed. If you don’t get that pro­mo­tion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t mat­ter.

10. TELL THE TRUTH

It’s inter­est­ing to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of use­ful infor­ma­tion about appro­pri­ate behav­ior towards clients and oth­er design­ers, but not a word about a designer’s rela­tion­ship to the pub­lic. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more cen­tral to what we do.

BONUS JOKE

A butch­er was open­ing his mar­ket one morn­ing and as he did a rab­bit popped his head through the door. The butch­er was sur­prised when the rab­bit inquired ‘Got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er said ‘This is a meat mar­ket – we sell meat, not veg­eta­bles.’ The rab­bit hopped off. The next day the butch­er is open­ing the shop and sure enough the rab­bit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er now irri­tat­ed says ‘Lis­ten you lit­tle rodent, I told you yes­ter­day we sell meat, we do not sell veg­eta­bles and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those flop­py ears to the floor.’ The rab­bit dis­ap­peared hasti­ly and noth­ing hap­pened for a week. Then one morn­ing the rab­bit popped his head around the cor­ner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butch­er said ‘No.’ The rab­bit said ‘Ok. Got any cab­bage?’’

Read Mil­ton Glaser’s “Ten Things I Have Learned” in its entire­ty here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

Mil­ton Glaser (RIP) Explains Why We Must Over­come the Fear of Fail­ure, Take Risks & Dis­cov­er Our True Poten­tial

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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The Splendid Book Design of the 1946 Edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

in Books, Design | June 15th, 2026

In 1929, the book pub­lish­er George Macy found­ed The Lim­it­ed Edi­tions Club (LEC), an imprint tasked with pub­lish­ing fine­ly illus­trat­ed lim­it­ed edi­tions of clas­sic books. In the years to come, Macy worked with artists like Matisse and Picas­so, and pho­tog­ra­phers like Edward West­on, to pro­duce books with artis­tic illus­tra­tions on their inner pages. And some­times The Lim­it­ed Edi­tions Club even turned its design focus to oth­er parts of the book. Take for exam­ple this 1946 edi­tion of Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and its pret­ty amaz­ing spine design.

Cre­at­ed by Clarence P. Hor­nung, the design cap­tures the essence of Gib­bon’s clas­sic, show­ing Roman pil­lars pro­gres­sive­ly crum­bling as your eyes move from Vol­ume 1 to Vol­ume 7. George Macy lat­er called the col­lec­tion, which also fea­tures illus­tra­tions by the great 18th-cen­tu­ry print­mak­er Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Pirane­si, “the most her­culean labor of our career.”

Find more infor­ma­tion about this 1946 edi­tion here. Or, if you have deep pock­ets, pur­chase a copy here.

Note: an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June 2015.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

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Kurt Vonnegut Diagrams the Shape of All Stories in a Master’s Thesis Rejected by U. Chicago

in Design, Literature, Writing | June 3rd, 2026

“What has been my pret­ti­est con­tri­bu­tion to the cul­ture?” asked Kurt Von­negut in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy Palm Sun­day. His answer? His master’s the­sis in anthro­pol­o­gy for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, “which was reject­ed because it was so sim­ple and looked like too much fun.” The ele­gant sim­plic­i­ty and play­ful­ness of Vonnegut’s idea is exact­ly its endur­ing appeal. The idea is so sim­ple, in fact, that Von­negut sums the whole thing up in one ele­gant sen­tence: “The fun­da­men­tal idea is that sto­ries have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper, and that the shape of a giv­en society’s sto­ries is at least as inter­est­ing as the shape of its pots or spear­heads.” In 2011, we fea­tured the video below of Von­negut explain­ing his the­o­ry, “The Shapes of Sto­ries.” We can add to the dry wit of his les­son the pic­to-info­graph­ic by graph­ic design­er Maya Eil­am above, which strik­ing­ly illus­trates, with exam­ples, the var­i­ous sto­ry shapes Von­negut described in his the­sis. (Read a con­densed ver­sion here.)

The pre­sen­ter who intro­duces Von­negut’s short lec­ture tells us that “his sin­gu­lar view of the world applies not just to his sto­ries and char­ac­ters but to some of his the­o­ries as well.” This I would affirm. When it comes to puz­zling out the import of a sto­ry I’ve just read, the last per­son I usu­al­ly turn to is the author. But when it comes to what fic­tion is and does in gen­er­al, I want to hear it from writ­ers of fic­tion. Some of the most endur­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures are expert writ­ers on writ­ing. Von­negut, a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor, ranks very high­ly among them. Does it do him a dis­ser­vice to con­dense his ideas into what look like high-res, low-read­abil­i­ty work­place safe­ty graph­ics? On the con­trary, I think.

Though the design may be a lit­tle slick for Von­negut’s unapolo­get­i­cal­ly indus­tri­al approach, he’d have appre­ci­at­ed the slight­ly corny, slight­ly macabre boil­er­plate iconog­ra­phy. His work turns a sus­pi­cious eye on over­com­pli­cat­ed pos­tur­ing and cham­pi­ons unsen­ti­men­tal, Mid­west­ern direct­ness. Vonnegut’s short, trade pub­li­ca­tion essay, “How to Write With Style,” is as suc­cinct and prac­ti­cal a state­ment on the sub­ject in exis­tence. One will encounter no more ruth­less­ly effi­cient list than his “Eight Rules for Writ­ing Fic­tion.” But it’s in his “Shapes of Sto­ries” the­o­ry that I find the most insight into what fic­tion does, in bril­liant­ly sim­ple and fun­ny ways that any­one can appre­ci­ate.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Buckminster Fuller Creates an Animated Visualization of Human Population Growth from 1000 B.C.E. to 1965

in Design, Maps | May 7th, 2026

Sit back, relax, put on some music (I’ve found Chopin’s Noc­turne in B major well-suit­ed), and watch the video above, a silent data visu­al­iza­tion by vision­ary archi­tect and sys­tems the­o­rist Buck­min­ster Fuller, “the James Brown of indus­tri­al design.” The short film from 1965 com­bines two of Fuller’s lead­ing con­cerns: the expo­nen­tial spread of the human pop­u­la­tion over finite mass­es of land and the need to revise our glob­al per­spec­tive via the “Dymax­ion map,” in order “to visu­al­ize the whole plan­et with greater accu­ra­cy,” as the Buck­min­ster Fuller Insti­tute writes, so that “we humans will be bet­ter equipped to address chal­lenges as we face our com­mon future aboard Space­ship Earth.”

Though you may know it best as the name of a geo­des­ic sphere at Disney’s Epcot Cen­ter, the term Space­ship Earth orig­i­nal­ly came from Fuller, who used it to remind us of our inter­con­nect­ed­ness and inter­de­pen­dence as we share resources on the only vehi­cle we know of that can sus­tain us in the cos­mos.

“We are all astro­nauts,” he wrote in his 1969 Oper­at­ing Man­u­al for Space­ship Earth, and yet we refuse to see the long-term con­se­quences of our actions on our spe­cial­ized craft: “One of the rea­sons why we are strug­gling inad­e­quate­ly today,” Fuller argued in his intro­duc­tion, “is that we reck­on our costs on too short­sight­ed a basis and are lat­er over­whelmed with the unex­pect­ed costs brought about by our short­sight­ed­ness.”

Like all vision­ar­ies, Fuller thought in long spans of time, and he used his design skills to help oth­ers do so as well. His pop­u­la­tion visu­al­iza­tion doc­u­ments human growth from 1000 B.C.E. to Fuller’s present, at the time, of 1965. In the image above (see a larg­er ver­sion here), we have a graph­ic from that same year—made col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with artist and soci­ol­o­gist John McHale—showing the “shrink­ing of our plan­et by man’s increased trav­el and com­mu­ni­ca­tion speeds around the globe.” (It must be near micro­scop­ic by now.) Fuller takes an even longer view, look­ing at “the con­flu­ence of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies,” writes Rikke Schmidt Kjær­gaard, “from 500,000 B.C.E. to 1965.”

Here Fuller com­bines his pop­u­la­tion data with the tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs of moder­ni­ty. Though he’s thought of in some quar­ters as a genius and in some as a kook, Fuller demon­strat­ed his tremen­dous fore­sight in seem­ing­ly innu­mer­able ways. But it was in the realm of design that he excelled in com­mu­ni­cat­ing what he saw. “Pio­neers of data visu­al­iza­tion,” Fuller and McHale were two of “the first to chart long-term trends of indus­tri­al­iza­tion and glob­al­iza­tion.” Instead of becom­ing alarmed and fear­ful of what the trends showed, Fuller got to work design­ing for the future, ful­ly aware, writes the Fuller Insti­tute, that “the plan­et is a sys­tem, and a resilient one.”

Fuller thought like a rad­i­cal­ly inven­tive engi­neer, but he spoke and wrote like a peacenik prophet, writ­ing that a sys­tem of nar­row spe­cial­iza­tions ensures that skill sets “are not com­pre­hend­ed com­pre­hen­sive­ly… or they are real­ized only in neg­a­tive ways, in new weapon­ry or the indus­tri­al sup­port only of war far­ing.” We’ve seen this vision of soci­ety played out to a fright­en­ing extent. Fuller saw a way out, one in which every­one on the plan­et can live in com­fort and secu­ri­ty with­out con­sum­ing (then not renew­ing) the Earth’s resources. How can this be done? You’ll have to read Fuller’s work to find out. Mean­while, as his visu­al­iza­tions sug­gest, it’s best for us to take the long view—and give up on short-term rewards and profits—in our assess­ments of the state of Space­ship Earth.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Inno­va­tion that Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Map Design (1943)

How the Human Pop­u­la­tion Reached 8 Bil­lion: An Ani­mat­ed Video Cov­ers 300,000 Years of His­to­ry in Four Min­utes

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Unit­ed States’ Explod­ing Pop­u­la­tion Growth Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

in Design | February 20th, 2026

Built dur­ing the depths of the Great Depres­sion (from 1933 to 1937), the Gold­en Gate Bridge became the longest and tallest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Dur­ing its con­struc­tion, work­ers bat­tled harsh con­di­tions — strong winds, thick fog, and the risk of plung­ing into the San Fran­cis­co Bay. 11 souls per­ished. Like­wise, the engi­neer Joseph Strauss had to work through com­pli­cat­ed design chal­lenges to anchor the struc­ture in the deep waters, then spin mas­sive cables and ten­sion them across the 4,000-foot span. Cre­at­ed by the YouTube chan­nel Ani­ma­graffs, the 3D ani­mat­ed video above takes view­ers on a tech­ni­cal tour of the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s con­struc­tion, decon­struct­ing the engi­neer­ing that makes the bridge both beau­ti­ful and endur­ing.

Note: If you vis­it this post in our archive, you can see vin­tage footage that shows the bridge under con­struc­tion and then open­ing to traf­fic in 1937.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the Brook­lyn Bridge Was Built: The Sto­ry of One of the Great­est Engi­neer­ing Feats in His­to­ry

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Build­ing the Gold­en Gate Bridge: A Retro Film Fea­tur­ing Orig­i­nal Archival Footage

 

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The Untold Story of Bauhaus Women: The Avant-Garde Artists Who Helped Shape Modernism

in Art, Design, History | February 13th, 2026

It does­n’t take too long a look at the almost sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly clean-lined build­ings of Wal­ter Gropius to get the impres­sion that the man want­ed to ush­er in a new world, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that many of them went up before World War II. Take the Bauhaus Dessau build­ing, which, though com­plet­ed exact­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, looks like a con­crete trans­mis­sion from the future that nev­er arrived, or one that may indeed still be on the way. It once housed the Ger­man art school turned polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al engine he found­ed in 1919, whose prin­ci­ples includ­ed absolute equal­i­ty between male and female par­tic­i­pants — or they did at first, at any rate.

Soon decid­ing that the new insti­tu­tion would­n’t be tak­en seri­ous­ly with too high a pro­por­tion of women, Gropius lim­it­ed their enroll­ment to one-third of the stu­dent body. That episode, among oth­ers that under­score the ways in which Gropius and the Bauhaus’ osten­si­ble com­mit­ment to the advance­ment of women was­n’t all it could be, fig­ures into Susanne Radel­hof’s doc­u­men­tary The Untold Sto­ry of Bauhaus Women.

Yet what­ev­er the short­com­ings in that depart­ment one might iden­ti­fy from a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry van­tage, the fact remains that the Bauhaus made pos­si­ble — or at least encour­aged — more endur­ing and influ­en­tial work by female artists and design­ers than almost any art school in ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Europe.

Among the almost 500 women who stud­ied at the Bauhaus, the film pro­files fig­ures like Alma Busch­er, “who cre­at­ed pro­to­types of avant-garde fur­ni­ture and toys”; “vision­ary met­al­smith and design­er” Mar­i­anne Brandt; Gun­ta Stöl­zl, whose “weav­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ized mod­ern tex­tile design” (weav­ing even­tu­al­ly being the main pro­gram to which women were admit­ted); Friedl Dick­er, a “mul­ti­tal­ent­ed artist” ded­i­cat­ed to the Bauhaus; and Lucia Moholy, whose “excep­tion­al pho­tographs still influ­ence how we view Bauhaus design today.” The school itself may have shut down in 1933, owing to the con­flict between its aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal ends and those of the ris­ing Nazi Par­ty, but the for­ward-look­ing nature and world­wide cul­tur­al influ­ence of the Bauhaus have ensured that we still feel the influ­ence of its alum­ni, male and female alike.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

The Pol­i­tics & Phi­los­o­phy of the Bauhaus Design Move­ment: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The Women of the Bauhaus: See Hip, Avant-Garde Pho­tographs of Female Stu­dents & Instruc­tors at the Famous Art School

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

The Bauhaus Book­shelf: Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books, Jour­nals, Man­i­festos & Ads That Still Inspire Design­ers World­wide

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Discover Khipu, the Ancient Incan Record & Writing System Made Entirely of Knots

in Design, History, Language | February 6th, 2026

Khi­pus, the portable infor­ma­tion archives cre­at­ed by the Inca, may stir up mem­o­ries of 1970s macrame with their long strands of intri­cate­ly knot­ted, earth-toned fibers, but their func­tion more close­ly resem­bled that of a dense­ly plot­ted com­put­er­ized spread­sheet.

As Cecil­ia Par­do-Grau, lead cura­tor of the British Museum’s cur­rent exhi­bi­tion Peru: a jour­ney in time explains in the above Cura­tors Cor­ner episode, khi­pus were used to keep track of every­thing from inven­to­ries and cen­sus­es to his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, using a sys­tem that assigned mean­ing to the type and posi­tion of knot, spaces between knots, cord length, fiber col­or, etc.

Much of the infor­ma­tion pre­served with­in khi­pus has yet to be deci­phered by mod­ern schol­ars, though the Open Khipu Repos­i­to­ry — com­pu­ta­tion­al anthro­pol­o­gist Jon Clin­daniel’s open-source data­base — makes it pos­si­ble to com­pare the pat­terns of hun­dreds of khi­pus resid­ing in muse­um and uni­ver­si­ty col­lec­tions.

Even in the Incan Empire, few were equipped to make sense of a khipu. This task fell to quipu­ca­may­ocs, high­born admin­is­tra­tive offi­cials trained since child­hood in the cre­ation and inter­pre­ta­tion of these organ­ic spread­sheets.

Fleet mes­sen­gers known as chask­is trans­port­ed khipus on foot between admin­is­tra­tive cen­ters, cre­at­ing an infor­ma­tion super­high­way that pre­dates the Inter­net by some five cen­turies. Khi­pus’ stur­dy organ­ic cot­ton or native camelid fibers were well suit­ed to with­stand­ing both the rig­ors of time and the road.

A 500-year-old com­pos­ite khipu that found its way to the British Muse­um organ­ics con­ser­va­tor Nicole Rode pri­or to the exhi­bi­tion was intact, but severe­ly tan­gled, with a brit­tle­ness that betrayed its age. Below, she describes falling under the khipu’s spell, dur­ing the painstak­ing process of restor­ing it to a con­di­tion where­by researchers could attempt to glean some of its secrets.

Vis­it Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino’s web­site to learn more about khipu in a series of fas­ci­nat­ing short arti­cles that accom­pa­nied their ground­break­ing 2003 exhib­it QUIPU: count­ing with knots in the Inka Empire.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How the Incas Per­formed Skull Surgery More Suc­cess­ful­ly Than U.S. Civ­il War Doc­tors

How the Inca Used Intri­cate­ly-Knot­ted Cords, Called Khipu, to Write Their His­to­ries, Send Mes­sages & Keep Records

Explore the Flo­ren­tine Codex: A Bril­liant 16th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Doc­u­ment­ing Aztec Cul­ture Is Now Dig­i­tized & Avail­able Online

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

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