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On Deception

October 29, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.  There’s an ancient story about three entrepreneurial lads who come into possession of a cloak one evening and decide to sell it at the market. Perhaps they came into possess...

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On Proportion

September 17, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.   What does it mean to be perfectly proportioned? Is it possible? The biologist JBS Haldane wrote about species “being the right size.” What he meant was that in nature, the ...

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Imagining Naples

August 06, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.   The machines do not work as intended. They are always on the border of total breakdown, held together more by ingenuity than mechanical integrity. “As time goes by, one beg...

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Dressing A Nation

June 04, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.    Who needs a uniform? What does it mean to adopt one? And what connects people who dress the same? These questions were on the minds of entrants to the Swedish Royal Patrio...

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On Taste

May 21, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.   Taste is complicated. In different contexts, it’s a physical sense or a social grace, something you feel immediately and certainly, or something you learn bit by bit over y...

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On Athletic Beauty

May 07, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.    Any job done well is a pleasure, but sporting achievement distills that pleasure into a kind of beauty. What looks like work to the rest of us is closer to inventive play ...

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On Envy

April 23, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.   I speak today of a secret vice. Rarely admitted, but relentlessly practiced. “The sin that everybody commits.”* No, not that one. A distinctly modern sin, made for (and per...

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Craft as Design

March 25, 2019

by Alexander Freeling.    How do buildings resist gravity? Or, for that matter, strong winds, weathering, tectonic shudders, and the seasonal heat and ice? The modern answer has two parts: a scienc...

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