Marie Antoinette by Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun

The Drama of Point d’Alençon Needle Lace

In its heyday, lace was beautiful, expensive, and handmade. Naturally, lace smuggling became the stuff of legend.
Tremolite asbestos from the Aure Valley, French Pyrenees

When Asbestos Was a Gift Fit for a King

File under: “don’t try this at home.”
A contraption used to extract the silk from a spider

The Tangled History of Weaving with Spider Silk

Spider silk is as strong as steel and as light as a feather, but attempts to industrialize its production have gotten stuck, so to speak.
Turkish delight

Why Was Turkish Delight C.S. Lewis’s Guilty Pleasure?

Austerity during WWII was hardly the time for pounds of exotic candy. Yet The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe prominently features Turkish delight.