For most of the history of keeping bees, getting honey meant damaging the colony that produced it.
Bees build comb attached to whatever surfaces are available, fused to the walls…
There is an assumption about mosaic that treats it as decoration applied to a finished surface — small pieces stuck onto a floor or a wall, like tiles.
That is…
There is a category of traditional building technique that looks primitive and turns out to be doing something subtle, and thatch is the clearest example available.
The appearance suggests a…
Everything is built around a solid form, and everything afterwards is a set of conflicting requirements settled in a particular way. Here are fifteen decisions inside any pair.
1. It…
There is a difference between materials that are gathered and materials that are extracted, and it explains why some textiles were cheap and others were not.
Wool is gathered. It…
There is a category of object where the useful part is the absence rather than the substance, and netting is the clearest example.
A net is mostly nothing. The material…