Art & Design

Before distilleries used glass bottles, many of them offered liquor stores branded ceramic jugs that could be filled and sold to customers. This pair of George Dickel jugs was used around 1900. From The Art of American Whiskey by Noah Rothbaum.

Books
Arts

From Medicine To Modern Revival: A History Of American Whiskey, In Labels

11:57am July 09, 2015

by Tove Danovich

During Prohibition, booze was banned, but "medicinal" spirits weren't, a loophole whiskey makers exploited. That's just one of the tidbits a new book tracing the history of whiskey labels reveals.

Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan by Joachim Wtewael.

Arts

Do It Like A Deity: A Dutch Artist Depicts Gods Gone Wild

11:45am July 08, 2015

by Susan Stamberg

At the turn of the 16th century, Joachim Wtewael painted passionate stories from the Bible and mythology. The Dutch artist was a very strict Calvinist, but on canvas, he let loose.

Queue Listen Now

Standing in their backyard in Cochas Grande, Peru, Katya and Blanca Cantos, hold the fruit of their labor. The gourd at left shows scenes from a potato harvest. The just-started gourd at right will tell the story of an ancestor's epic trek.

Peruvian Sisters Can Turn A Gourd Into An $800 Objet D'Art

10:23pm July 03, 2015

by Marc Silver

They can spend up to two months on a single gourd, creating scenes that tell a story. Think of it as a graphic gourd novel.

Chicago To Replace Famed Ferris Wheel With Taller One

6:31pm July 03, 2015

NPR's Rachel Martin talks with Alexander Eisenschmidt, an assistant professor of architecture at University of Illinois at Chicago, about the new Chicago Ferris Wheel.

Queue Listen Now

Art of the people: Fill a glass with hope, a butter sculpture crafted by Jim Victor and Marie Pelton. "People don't understand how [the sculpting] is done -- it's like magic and just appears," Victor says. "But people understand butter."

A Toast To Butter Sculpture, The Art That Melts The Hearts Of The Masses

5:51pm June 29, 2015

by Tove Danovich

Once the province of nobles, food sculptures became the art of the people in America. Nowhere is this truer than the butter sculpture, a form that is at once familiar and impressive.

Arts

Queen Elizabeth, The Art Critic

10:30am June 27, 2015

by Scott Simon

On a state visit to Germany, Queen Elizabeth II was given a modernist portrait. As NPR's Scott Simon notes, the queen was unimpressed.

Queue Listen Now

Arts

Immortalized As 'The Woman In Gold,' How A Young Jew Became A Secular Icon

1:34pm June 23, 2015

by Susan Stamberg

Gustav Klimt's 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was seized by the Nazis. A film now tells the story of Adele's niece, who fought to recover her family's paintings more than a half century later.

Queue Listen Now

The flamingo ornament was one of hundreds of items that Donald Featherstone made for the Union Products plastics company.

Man Who Created The Pink Plastic Lawn Flamingo Dies

1:15pm June 23, 2015

by Lucy Perkins

Donald Featherstone modeled the lawn ornament after images he saw in National Geographic. "Things I did made people happy, and that's what life is all about," he said in 2006.

Who? by Sharon Yang, 10, a fifth-grader in Brooklyn. Of this work, she says: "I put a lot of effort in my artwork to make the texture on the tree and the feathers on the owl."

Kids' Art Show Takes Over 2 Billboards In Times Square

6:49am June 19, 2015

by Bill Chappell

Through the weekend, art by 23 public school students will be seen on two large billboards in the heart of New York City.

George Caleb Bingham's The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846) became wildly popular after an East Coast art union bought it and started disseminating it as a print.

Arts

In 1846, 'The Jolly Flatboatmen' Did A Different Sort Of River Dance

7:19am June 17, 2015

by Susan Stamberg

The painting by George Caleb Bingham became popular for its depiction of the 19th-century American experience. Now, it's the star of a new show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Queue Listen Now