The Ruin and Revival of the City that Built America

Some American companies are such a part of our everyday lives, they’re taken for granted, the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google for example. But there is another company that although it can be seen everywhere, no-one notices. Even more mysteriously, the company no longer exists. But walk through any American city, or picture its greatest…

The Secret World of “Ghost Shift” Midnight Manufacturing

The ship of Theseus, one of the oldest quandaries in Western philosophy, posits whether an object reconstructed with replaced parts can be considered the same as the original. But what if the ship is constructed with the same parts, in the exact same shipyard, only without the ship maker’s knowledge? It happens far more frequently than…

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How Pianos Built a Forgotten Utopian Village in Queens, NY

If you were to guess what the most intricate thing being made in America today is, chances are you wouldn’t imagine that it’s a piano. Almost entirely still hand made and assembled in Queens, New York after 160 years, Steinway pianos are known the world over. Lesser known, is the fact that Steinway & Sons…

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How the Last Great American Flower Factory Still Blooms Over Midtown, NYC

Once upon a time, a woman needed a parrot tulip. Not just any tulip. “She started with something like this,” explains Adam Brand, heir to his family’s 4th generation flower factory business, M&S Schmalberg. He picks up a few flat, flower shaped layers of fabric. “Then we took some little poofs, some hibiscus, all different…

The Last Makers of the Parisian Café Chair

Stepping inside Maison Gatti is like entering Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for Francophiles and furniture connoisseurs alike. Nestled in the Parisian commune of Fontainebleau, the atelier is the last of its kind — and one of the few surviving sources for authentic Parisian bistro chairs. As such, Gatti has become the guardian of a long-standing…

The Canary Girls and the WWI Poisons That Turned Them Yellow

At lunchtime, the women had to be separated in the cafeteria because everything they touched turned yellow. They were called the “Canary Girls” because of their bright yellow skin and green or ginger-coloured hair. With the nation’s men at war and male labour in short supply, Britain’s women had been recruited to ramp up production ammunition and were…

Unexpected Beauty Hiding Inside America’s Last Fabric Factories

Waterfalls of technicolor thread, giant Singer sewing machines, endless patterns and the occasional intervention of man; you can almost hear the humming of spinning frames in Christopher Payne’s photographs. For his series called Textiles, the architect and photographer documented twenty-five of the last textile mills in New England, some a century and one dating back to the Civil War. Despite our…

Welcome to Liberace’s Secret Parisian Palace of Kitsch

In 1972, Marie-Helene de Rothschild threw a surrealist dinner party at the family’s mansion in the suburbs of Paris. Dali was there of course, and Audrey Hepburn showed up with her head trapped inside a Magritte birdcage. It’s a night people still talk about more than 40 years later; up there with Studio 54’s legendary New Year parties…

Awakening the Giant: An Abandoned London Icon, Then & Now

Converted lofts, factories, hospitals- I’ve seen them all, but up until a couple of weeks ago I’d never have imagined a derelict 20th century power station would pose such an attractive location to set up home base. Yet here it is, Battersea’s iconic and inspired addition to the London property market, and you can see…

Inside the FBI’s Colossal Fingerprint Factory

Before the FBI went digital, it looked a little more like a giant stock warehouse for Amazon.com. In the 1920s, the bureau was only employing 25 workers to classify around 800,000 print cards, but by 1943, there were more than 20,000 employees sorting through 70 million fingerprints. At the height of wartime, the archives were so overwhelmed that the FBI eventually…