Curio Cabinet

The difference between gargoyles and grotesques begins with rainwater. What happens when the original carvings wear away is a much more interesting question. Copy

Umbrellas have attracted mockery, elaborate pavement manners and a Shropshire death omen. A look at their peculiar social history, and why I carry two.

The Victorian language of flowers was never one fixed code. White roses meant different things in different books, and the famous secret-bouquet story is shakier than it looks.

I went looking for a bedtime audiobook and accidentally rebuilt my childhood fantasy shelf from fragments. Some memories were remarkably accurate. Others had quietly rewritten the books.

I’d always bought bedding by pattern, size and price. Then I learned what cotton, percale, sateen, bamboo-derived fibres and thread count actually mean.

Fantasy has plenty of monsters. What it often loses is everything that made them strange in the first place: jobs, cures, local customs, particular hills and one very suspicious wolf-man.

I like objects that show their age. I am much less interested when the age has been applied with sandpaper, dark glaze and decorative worm holes. On patina, distressed furniture and the difference between evidence and imitation.

Koko’s recipe in Breath of the Wild gives you pumpkin, meat and almost no useful instructions. I turned that idea into a properly autumnal stuffed butternut squash dinner.

Some houseplants change the shape and atmosphere of a room; others simply occupy a pot. Here’s how silhouette, texture, proportion, light and placement make the difference.

Detachable shirt collars once had their own boxes, studs and laundry routine. The system is clever, surprisingly modular and absolutely more administration than I want before work.