Fall 2025: Adorn

What’s outside counts.

In this issue, the delight is in the details. You’ll read about distinctive surface adornment practices like Charles Thompson’s imaginatively shaped and carved green wood furniture and Samantha Briegel’s teapots and platters dressed up with florals and lace. You’ll learn how the UK’s Alternative Limb Project reframes prosthetic limbs as wearable art, and you’ll step into the provocative world of Susan Beech’s narrative jewelry collection. Also in this issue, we visit seven craftspeople in western North Carolina whose practices have been reshaped and reimagined one year after Hurricane Helene.

As you get to know the artists, collectors, and organizations here, we hope you take a moment to reflect on the function of decoration in your own life. How does ornamentation shape your experience? How can adornment change and deepen our stories about self, home, family, and culture?