Cynthia Green holds an M.A. in History from Emory University. She has written for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and the Circuit des Remparts Angoulême, among others, and is a regular contributor to Mode & Tendances Magazine.
Between 1996 and 2003, a folklorist studied the connection between handlooms (technology), sari makers (producers), and sari wearers (consumers) in the ancient city of Banaras.
Giuseppi Verdi's 1853 opera La Traviata was a shocker when it was first performed. Nineteenth-century audiences didn't expect to watch a sex worker die of tuberculosis at the opera.
Alexander Pushkin is known as the quintessential Russian writer, but he took particular inspiration from his African great-grandfather, General Abraham Petrovitch Gannibal.
A money belt with a zipper became an instant success among WWI U.S. sailors, whose uniforms did not have pockets. Almost all initial zipper sales were for the money belts.
Since the nineteenth century, peat (or turf) has brought social consciousness to art. In the 1800s, Pre-Raphaelite paintings focused on the fact that the poor harvested it.
17th-century Amsterdam was the first city in Europe to have an efficient system of street lighting—thanks to a Golden Age painter called Jan van der Heyden.
Margaret and Frances Macdonald and their Glasgow School of Art classmates Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Harold MacNair were Art Nouveau's Glasgow Four.
First Nations' seashell-derived wampum was Massachusetts' first legal currency, used as currency throughout northeastern America into the 19th century.
Despite the jurassic-sounding name, pteridomania (from the Greek for fern, plant and mania) was responsible for the 19th century fern leaf collector's job.
Modern pianos are the product of a 600-year evolution—from Hermann Poll's 1397 clavicembalum, to clavichords, harpsichords, and the modern grand piano.
Buon fresco, perhaps the best-known kind of wall painting, is the result of a chemical reaction turning paint and wet plaster into a single, solid surface.
Jan Davidszoon de Heem, one of the greatest still-life painters of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age, brought particular brilliance to book still-lifes.
In August Pantone honored late singer/songwriter Prince with a new shade of purple called Purple Rain. Why is the color purple considered to be so special?
