On a sweltering summer day in Venice, the temperature in Yasuhiko Tsuchida's glass-making atelier feels at least 10 degrees hotter than it is outside. Men roast their faces against groaning furnaces, shirts drenched with sweat, pulling clumps of luminous molten glass from the fire ...

Kiyomiya is keeping alive a way of thinking about books that may be finding itself under threat in our world of Kindles.

A renowned craftsman in Florence is working hard to maintain his freedom of expression as a shoemaker.

Etsuro Sotoo cuts a distinguished figure on the Barcelona culture scene. As the Sagrada Familia's only official sculptor, he exudes old-world style in his felt fedora, flowing scarf and manicured goatee. Yet his life's work of turning Antoni Gaudi's art nouveau cathedral visions into stone ...

In a letter home to Portuguese brethren, Jesuit missionary Pedro de Alcacova writes of singing a Mass to Japanese believers in 1552: "Our voices weren't good," he recalls, "still the Christian believers rejoiced." It was Christmas Eve in Yamaguchi, and the patience, if not faith, ...