In a cramped studio in Ravenna, Italy, Takako Hirai runs her finger along the cracks in a mosaic artwork depicting dappled light in a park. The spaces between the tiles, she explains, determine the flow and movement of a mosaic, even more than the arrangement of the pieces themselves — as if meaning were slipping through the cracks to be teased out by the observer. It makes mosaic the perfect medium for embedding the kakushi-e, or hidden images, that the artist from Kumamoto places in her work — both to hide her inner self and reveal it. ...

In the Roman amphitheater of Verona, Italy, the elephants and horses in ancient Egyptian regalia marched onto stage to the thunderous chords of Guiseppe Verdi's opera "Aida." The singers filled the balmy night with their voices, soaring over the trumpets and crashing cymbals of the orchestra — and for one girl watching the spectacle it seemed like "a world of dreams." ...

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 as the glass artist directs the works. ...

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, ...