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...

One of the influences on design and technology in the nineteenth century was new information on health and hygiene. It was discovered early in the century that germs cause disease, and there were a number of cholera outbreaks beginning early in the nineteenth century which lasted through most of the century. Wallpaper had always been...