How Scientists Recreated Ancient Egypt’s Long-Lost Pigment, “Egyptian Blue”

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Pho­to cour­tesy of Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty.

It’s become fash­ion­able, in recent years, to observe that we live in an increas­ing­ly beige-and-gray world from which all col­or is being drained. Whether or not that’s real­ly the case, all of us still enjoy easy access to a range of col­ors that nobody in the ancient…

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Printed Circa 1652

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The sto­ry of cof­fee goes back to the 13th cen­tu­ry, when it came out of Ethiopia, then spread to Egypt and Yemen. It reached the Mid­dle East, Turkey, and Per­sia dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry, and then Europe dur­ing the ear­ly 17th, though not with­out con­tro­ver­sy. In Venice, some called it…

How Art Conservators Restore Old Paintings & Revive Their Original Colors

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We tend to imag­ine old paint­ings as hav­ing a mut­ed, yel­low-brown cast, and not with­out rea­son. Many of the exam­ples we’ve seen in life real­ly do look that way, though usu­al­ly not because the artist intend­ed it. As Julian Baum­gart­ner of Chicago’s Baum­gart­ner Fine Art Restora­tion explains in the video…

The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

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Pho­to of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen by Kathin­ka Pasveer via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may hear the phrase “elec­tron­ic music” and think of super­star dub­step DJs in fun­ny hel­mets at beach­side celebri­ty par­ties. Alter­na­tive­ly, you may think of the mer­cu­r­ial com­po­si­tions of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, the musique con­crete of Pierre Hen­ry, or the oth­er­world­ly…

When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the Netherlands

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In the decades after the Sec­ond World War, many coun­tries faced the chal­lenge of rebuild­ing their hous­ing and infra­struc­ture while also hav­ing to accom­mo­date a fast-arriv­ing baby boom. The gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands got more cre­ative than most, putting mon­ey toward exper­i­men­tal hous­ing projects start­ing in the late nine­teen-six­ties. Hop­ing to hap­pen upon the next…