Wednesday, October 28

A daily field guide to visual culture

Since 2009

Prue, the young heroine of LAIKA's stop-motion film Wildwood, rides on the back of The General, a giant golden eagle puppet with hand-laid feathers, against a sunset sky

Art

Inside Wildwood, the Stop-Motion Epic LAIKA Built Out of Portland

Fifteen years in the making, LAIKA's Wildwood rebuilds Portland by hand, from a half-scale Pittock Mansion to an eagle with 9,000 feathers. It opens October 23.

Oct 2111 min read

Render of BIG's Tirana Fountain Plaza in Albania, white disk-shaped floors on slim columns rising over planted gardens and paths in Rinia Park

Architecture

BIG Wants to Hang a Cloud Over Tirana, and Let It Rain

Most fountains shoot water up. BIG's new plan for Tirana drops it on your head.

Oct 142 min read

A mosaic of colorful objects from the Moss and Fog Shop sorted by color, from pink and red through orange, gold, green and blue to violet

Colors

The Color Issue: Browse Our Archive by Color, Then Shop the Spectrum

We sorted seventeen years of Moss & Fog by the color that fills each frame. Browse the archive…

Oct 139 min read

Latest

New on Moss & Fog

The low wooden Ofuro spa pavilion at Snow Peak Campfield in Long Beach, Washington, seen across a still pond through a stand of thin alder trees

Architecture

Snow Peak Makes You Leave the Car

Snow Peak's first American campground keeps cars at the gate, puts Kengo Kuma's living boxes in the trees and saves…

Oct 285 min read

Pawel Jonca illustration of a fried egg on a bright blue ground, its yolk drawn with a winking, smiling face

Art

One Long Day, Drawn by Paweł Jońca

Tea with a teddy bear, a robot at lunch and hearts hidden in plain sight. Sixteen pictures by Polish illustrator…

Oct 287 min read

A wall of tall, fluted rhyolite spires rises above green oaks under a deep blue sky at Chiricahua National Park, Arizona

Nature

The Land of Standing-Up Rocks, America’s Newest National Park

Chiricahua, a canyon country of balanced rocks and rhyolite spires in southeastern Arizona, just became America's 64th national park.

Oct 273 min read

Outer Space

Inside Thunderbird, the Space Station With No Floor

Exploring the Thunderbird expandable space station, designed by OMI and Max Space.

Oct 263 min read

A Flash Forest seeding drone flies over a valley of burned, standing trees in low golden evening light, with hills fading into haze behind

Nature

How Drones Are Reseeding Canada’s Wildfire-Scarred Forests

In northern Quebec, drones fire seed pods into burned ground. The seeds inside were picked by hand at thirty below.

Oct 262 min read

A European larch glowing gold in autumn stands beside a dark green evergreen conifer of similar shape, with Alpine peaks and blue sky behind

Nature

The Conifer That Quits Every Fall

Larches look like evergreens until autumn, when they turn gold and drop every needle. Here's why, plus Oregon's larch smiley…

Oct 265 min read

Design

Hollywood’s Most Halloween-Ready Cars, Parked at the Petersen

Teeth on the bumper, a skeleton on two wheels, a Batmobile built for Gothic Gotham. The spookiest movie cars the…

Oct 253 min read

Clusters of angular metal blocks in gradient powder coat, emerald fading to red, coral to blue, violet to copper, scattered and stacked across a concrete floor, Chromatic Symphony of Landscapes by Moriyuki Ochiai Architects

Sculpture

A Japanese Island’s Colored Cliffs, Rebuilt as Painted Metal Furniture

Moriyuki Ochiai Architects turned the banded, 90-million-year-old rocks of a tiny Japanese island into a room full of gradient-painted metal…

Oct 243 min read

A faded, sepia-toned crop of Norman Rockwell's 1926 Dixon Ticonderoga ad: a smiling shopkeeper hands a boy a yellow pencil beside a box of Ticonderogas

Design

Pencils Are Yellow for a Royal Reason

Sheep-marking rock, a French inventor, an Austrian pencil maker and a famous diamond: the surprisingly glamorous reason your pencil is…

Oct 237 min read

Browse seventeen years by color

Pick a color and we pull the stories where it fills the frame.

Red Orange Gold Green Teal Blue Violet Pink Brown Night Fog

General

Ben @ Bryce Canyon

Art

Curiot’s Curiosities

Art

Famous Figures Reimagined as Baby Dolls

Branding/Identity

Hypercolor Hands

Pavel Novák’s Low Poly Landscapes

A Paper Farmers Market

Animals

Old Brushes Become Delightful Nature Scenes

General

‘The Idea’ Shows Us The Struggle of Successfully Putting Pen To Paper

Show me something from the archive

More ways in

Wander the archive your way

Color is one door. Here are three more, each a different path through seventeen years of stories.

By subject

The Atlas

Eight worlds, from architecture and the natural world to the future. Pick one and wander.

By feel

The Senses

Five shelves for taste, smell, touch, sound and sight. The archive, sorted the way things feel.

In depth

The Guides

Our long reads. Each one gathers years of stories on a single subject into one place.

Food and drink

Pull up a chair

The most delicious corners of our archive, from a croissant that swallowed a cookie to the Negroni and its century behind the bar. Come hungry!

Art

Around now, years ago

Favorites we ran at this time of year, one from each year, still worth your time.

2022

Flowers

The guides, our long reads

Where seventeen years of stories are gathered into one place each.

The Shop · Curated Objects

Objects Worth Keeping

Twelve things with a maker behind them, chosen the way we choose what runs on the site: because someone got it exactly right.

Sold out Rare Trees $40

Giant Sequoia Pinecones, Set of Three $12

Mossy Walls Room and Body Spray $20

Luna Moth Pin $9.50 ~~$13~~

Thick Lines Tree Souvenir Patch $8.50

Pocket Terrarium, Self Sustaining Miniature Ecosystem $11

Cabin Porn $40

Minty Hot Cocoa Tin, Milk Chocolate Mint $17.25

The Outdoors Oracle $29.95

Sapele Balance Stones, Set of Five $79

Field Studies Vol. III: The Rare Ones (Set of Four Printable Art Prints) $6

Max Dinnerware, Bowls (Set of 6) $51 ~~$60~~

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