The remarkably graphic, geometric pattern of bright yellow and sea-green crystalline forms that map the surface of this elongated, arrow-like vase appear definitively modern. The origin of this decoration, though, is decidedly not. This vase was made by Arabia, the principal industrial pottery in Finland during the opening decade and a half of the twentieth...

Saara Hopea (later Saara Hopea-Untracht) began her career as a furniture and lamp designer, but started designing glassware in about 1952, at a time when Finnish design was gaining prominence on the world stage for its strong attention to materials and sense of organic form in a modern idiom. Kaj Frank, Hopea’s former teacher at...

An energy-efficient straw bale house is being built on the Mall, across the street from the US Capitol. Natural builders from around the country converged on Washington DC to construct the straw shelter and a bamboo shade structure. Rose Morin, a green builder from New Mexico and one of the over dozen volunteers with Builders...