This Constructivist-inspired textile likely was produced in the United States during the mid-to-late 1920s. The designer is presently unknown, but presumably was an individual familiar with Russian Constructivist design principles, which took inspiration from the industrial world. Printed in dark yellow and black on creamy off-white silk satin, the textile has an overall design of...

This print by James Abbott McNeill Whistler is part of a series of images the artist produced depicting the East London neighborhoods of Rotherhithe and Wapping in 1859–60. While English painters had traditionally avoided portraying these industrial districts of the city throughout the nineteenth century, Whistler’s Thames series takes for subject the city’s poorest workers...

Before the age of safety matches, matchbooks, and lighters, was the age of delicately intricate or simply functional matchsafes. Known as ‘vesta cases’ in Britain for their association with Vesta, the Roman goddess of fire and the hearth, matchsafes reigned as king when early friction matches were considered highly combustible and unreliable. To avoid the...