‘Melissa Clark Could Make a Phone Book Delicious’

Hello there! Are the lilacs going completely nuts where you live? My street is exploding in purple, and I highly recommend sticking your nose right into a cluster of blooms and inhaling deeply. Kinda smells like vanilla ice cream, right? Another recent (nonfloral) development: I’ve been cooking mostly vegetarian meals lately. I wish I could…

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A Cartier Program Is Helping Underrepresented Entrepreneurs

Since 2006, Cartier has championed female entrepreneurs whose business ventures have a positive effect on society and the environment. Cartier, the Richemont-owned jewelry house, is doing this through a program called the Cartier Women’s Initiative. The initiative awards women-owned or female-led businesses from any sector with grant money, networking opportunities, loans and professional advice designed…

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The Itsy Bitsy Spider Inspired a Microphone

Engineers and scientists have an enduring fascination with spider silk. Similar to typical worm silk that makes for comfy bedsheets, but much tougher, the material has inspired the invention of lighter and more breathable body armor and materials that could make airplane components stronger without adding weight. Researchers are even using examples drawn from spider…

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Jewelers at Forms Make Unusual, Sculptural Pieces

Forms isn’t a household name, but the Hong Kong jewelry house is drawing attention for its unusual contemporary style. A Japanese buckle from the late 19th century inspired the company’s co-founder Tzvika Janover’s latest obsession. The buckle was crafted in a Japanese gold and copper alloy called shakudo, its velvety brown patina unlike anything he’d…

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Chantal Joffe Paints Moments of Motherhood and Grief

Based in Tucson, Ariz., the boutique Desert Vintage has specialized in rare designer clothing since Salima Boufelfel and Roberto Cowan took it over in 2012. Many of their offerings — a century-old Fortuny evening robe or an Azzedine Alaïa suede wraparound top, for example — “can be a bit demanding to wear,” says Boufelfel. So…

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Jewelers Embrace the Animal Motif

The black-dappled white panther, sometimes curling around the wrist as a bracelet, sometimes crouched low as a brooch or glaring from a choker, is Cartier’s most emblematic animal. But it is not the only one. Tigers striped with black spinels and emerald-studded crocodiles gripping dials in their teeth were among the many animal-inspired timepieces Cartier…

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Tony Oursler Wants Your Most Haunted Objects

Inside a former synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Tony Oursler, 67, has built an extensive private collection of historic material related to magic, spirituality and the occult. The artist, who’s known for installations that combine video, sculpture and projections, has both an artistic investment in and a family connection to illusionism. His grandfather Fulton…

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Hidden Messages in Jewelry Has Become Popular Again

In 2014, Fie Isolde’s future husband wrote her a 28th birthday card that, she said, was “full of dreams about all the things we were going to do.” “When I got the card,” the Danish jewelry designer recalled last month during a video interview from her boutique in the Sycamore neighborhood of Los Angeles, “my…

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