Italy

Inside some Italian prisons, female inmates are using discarded fabrics to handcraft a range of goods to sell, and learning valuable job skills—literally stitching up their lives behind bars.

Inside some Italian prisons, female inmates are using discarded fabrics to handcraft a range of goods to sell. By learning valuable job skills and life skills, these women are literally stitching up their lives behind bars.

The late Butch Morris, a figure from the outer edges of jazz, reimagined conducting as a form of composition, coining his own word for the combination of the two.

As automation spreads, even into the world of fine art, an American sculptor proudly holds the barricades with the tools, techniques, and even the marble source used centuries ago by Michelangelo. Which side will prevail?

Many cultures have enjoyed the playful freedom that one feels after donning a mask. But no place has taken it to greater extremes, both elegant and diabolical, than Venice. A tour of the world of Venetian masks, and the annual Carnival mega-party they have inspired.

In a tiny town on Italy’s Northeastern coast, the Marchi family printworks may be the world’s last shop to produce handmade, rust-printed textiles from raw hemp, using a massive stone press dating to the 1600s.

Only a handful of artisans still practice the centuries-old craft of rust printing on fabric. Of those who do, even fewer use the traditional stone mangle, or press, on handwoven, raw hemp fabric, yielding textiles that can last for centuries. The Marchi family printworks, in Italy’s Romagna region, may well be the only place left in the world that still produces authentic, rust-printed textiles that are fully handmade.

For anyone who appreciates the intricately decorated walls and ceilings found in many Old World houses of worship, some of the finest examples of the form can be found in the mosaics of Ravenna, Italy. The tradition is so central to Ravenna’s culture that the city still produces world-renowned mosaic artisans to this day. This…