13 Cheap, Last Minute and Actually Good DIY Gift Ideas

From D.I.Y. TO “I.O.U”, here is a round-up of the best and cheapest gift last-minute ideas out there. For just about anyone: A “Gift Bucket”… Stock it with personalised little surprises according to the person’s taste and personality. You can find the lanterns or buckets at most supermarkets/ gardening/ homeware stores for as little as…

All Aboard the 1970s Sex Raft Experiment: the Best Reality TV Show That Never Was

Five men, six women and one 101-day, sex-starved ocean adventure. Has a catchy ring to it, no? “It was a fabulous adventure story,” said Marcus Lindeen, director of a 2018 documentary called The Raft that chronicles 1973’s “Acali Experiment,” in which an eclectic group set sail to find out if the best– or worst– of humankind rears its…

She Built a Candle Empire from her Ancestral Village in Mexico

The importance of ritual candles is celebrated in many cultures across the world. Their beauty is hidden in the hope and magic that persists until the last ray of beeswax-powered light, and the tradition preserves valuable ancestral storytelling and history. Zapotec candle making, in all its kaleidoscopic and ornamental mastery, is upheld by a single…

Welcome to the Birdhood

Just something I stumbled upon recently that was too fun not to share … Painted Jeff Canham and woodworker Luke Bartels collaborated to make this series of “seedy” urban establishments in 2012, a collection they called “For the Birds”. I love the little tongue in cheek details written on each of the houses and they…

The Vault

How Pianos Built a Forgotten Utopian Village in Queens, NY

If you were to guess what the most intricate thing being made in America today is, chances are you wouldn’t imagine that it’s a piano. Almost entirely still hand made and assembled in Queens, New York after 160 years, Steinway pianos are known the world over. Lesser known, is the fact that Steinway & Sons…

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The Lost Industry of Sign Painters

Sometimes I wonder about things like, who’s going to know how to make a piano in twenty years? Which skills will go extinct when the last generations of craftsmen and artisans can’t pass on the legacy of their trade? Forbes recently reported that despite a stubbornly high unemployment rate, skilled trades top the list of…

Nature’s Humble Gold: The Unexpected Elegance of Straw Craft

And now, for a DIY project at the intersection of spooky and cozy: the corn doll – which isn’t always in the form of a doll, mind you. That term is shorthand for any kind of straw artwork, be it a horseshoe or a crown, a dog or a pentagram. We love it because it’s…

The Last Makers of the Parisian Café Chair

Stepping inside Maison Gatti is like entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for Francophiles and furniture connoisseurs alike. Nestled in the Parisian commune of Fontainebleau, the atelier is the last of its kind — and one of the few surviving sources for authentic Parisian bistro chairs. As such, Gatti has become the guardian of a long-standing…

Inside Central Park’s 140 Year-old Marionette Theatre

“I spent some time as Peter Pan’s shadow” is the kind of sentence that’d only make sense here, at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park. This 143-year-old wooden chalet was plucked from Swedish soil, and rebuilt smack in the heart of Manhattan in 1877. Since then it’s had many lives, but none as…

He Spent 20 Years in the Desert Carving a Village of Dolls

Welcome to Possum Trot, California. Human population: 2. Doll population: 80. For decades, its human residents were Calvin Black and his wife Ruby, who moved out to the Mojave Desert in 1953, bought some land off of Ghost town rd. (an actual road that still exists), and proclaimed it “Possum Trot.” Over the course of…