Crafts
The Tapestry Weaver of Aubusson
On looms older than the French Revolution, Margaux Vincendeau weaves wool and silk into tapestries that will hang, she says, longer than any of the families that commission them.
Crafts editor
June Hartwell
June Hartwell apprenticed as a bookbinder before turning to journalism. She edits the Crafts section and writes about workshops, makers, and the time it takes to learn a thing properly.
Beats
Published in Common Hours
Nature
The Sheep That Are No Longer on Bowderdale
On a hill farm above the Eden Valley, a family has spent six years turning twelve hundred acres of overgrazed sheep ground back into something older, and the curlews have begun to nest again where the rushes have grown tall.
The Trades
Walking the Iron Under Manhattan
An MTA track inspector on the midnight shift walks two miles of tunnel between Canal and Brooklyn Bridge looking for cracks, loose bolts, and water.
Places
The Library Boat at Kemijoki
A retrofitted river ferry carries seven thousand books to nine villages along the Kemijoki river in northern Finland. Its librarian, Aino Saari, knows every reader by name.
Letters
The Bookbinder's Daughter Who Memorized the Naples Catalog
In a workshop above a bindery in the Spanish Quarter, an old woman recites, from memory, the catalog of a library that no longer exists.
Crafts
The Papermaker of Ogawamachi
In a snow-fed village in Saitama, Akiko Tateishi grows her own kozo, beats the pulp with river stones, and sheets washi paper that will outlast the houses it is glued into.
Profiles
The Only Bengali Grocer for Two Hundred Miles
Ruma Sengupta opened a small grocery in a Montana town in 2009. Customers drive in from four states for her mustard oil, fish, and the conversation in the back room.
Stories
The Choir Outside the Hospital
Every Wednesday since November 2009, a choir of about forty people has sung outside three hospitals in Sheffield, England, in all weathers, for anyone listening from a window.
Time
The Kitchen of Vicenta Torres: Mexico's First Woman-Authored Cookbook, 1893
In a small print shop in Guadalajara in the summer of 1893, a widow with three daughters and one printing contract published the first commercially printed cookbook by a woman in Mexico. It went through six editions before her death.
Nature
The Men Who Rewet Clara Bog
On a raised bog in the Irish midlands, a small team has spent twenty years undoing two centuries of drainage. The peat is rising again, millimetre by millimetre, and the sundews have come back.
The Trades
Twelve Hours of Lungs in Cedar Rapids
A night-shift respiratory therapist works a 7p-7a at a regional hospital in eastern Iowa, moving between the ICU, the ER, and a patient who keeps pulling out her BiPAP.