Not much is known about eighteenth-century furniture designer Thomas Chippendale, making his life and work perfect for mythologizing after his death.

Vivid hues in everyday products became eye-popping reality in the early twentieth century.

Donald Brothers was a storied Scottish firm that produced amazing fabric designs. Feast your eyes on a selection today.

Inspired by the Bauhaus and WPA posters, the midcentury designer all but invented the modern record-album cover.

Posters are part of a tradition of object-based learning at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Flaunting a massive collection of books did not start with work-from-home videoconferences.

When plastics were first invented, they seemed to promise a utopian future.

The famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright famously loathed commercialism, and yet he (reluctantly) designed commercial homewares to be mass-produced.

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.

Are you wearing seaweed? People have been for hundreds of years, in sizing, patterns and fibers, although they might not have known it.