I've been shopping around for a mirror to replace one that broke last month, and keep coming across trumeau mirrors. Trumeau mirrors (pronounced troo-MO) are set in tall wooden frames with a large section of painted or sculptural decoration at the top. But what are these unusual mirrors, and where did they come from? More

Readers, I know you're shy, so I've decided to be proactive and answer the burning window-vocabulary questions I know you've been quietly ruminating over for years. What's the difference between a mullion and a came, an oriel and a bay? Are your windows sash or casement? Are a transom and a clerestory the same thing? What did Edith Wharton have against picture windows? Read on and find out! More

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman At A Window (1822)
There was a time not so long ago that glass was a precious material, so highly valued that only the wealthiest homes had glass in their windows. And for millennia, of course, people had no glass at all in their windows. So how did we get here from there?

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Ideally, our furniture can reveal something about how we live and what we value. But in reality, other factors like cost, space and what is available in the marketplace ends up limiting us or diverting us from our true values. We might believe that form should follow function, but own an uncomfortably lumpy hand-me-down desk chair. Or we might fantasize about a huge snuggly sofa, but only be able to haul a spindly loveseat up the stairs. So it's inspirational to look at the Shakers, a religious sect who designed their homes and furnishings to be strictly in line with their values and ideas, and in the process, helped shape modern style in general. More

A silver fork with animal hoof finial, from Byzantium (possibly Syria), 4th century AD

The youngest member of the flatware family, the fork has only become an essential utensil in the last couple hundred years — after all, who needs a fork when you have fingers, aka the perfect tools for picking up morsels? Many historians see a parallel between the rise of the fork and the rise of civilization. You can also read it as an index of attitudes toward hygiene and luxury. So…what the fork? More

We're all familiar with Pantone's color chips, cheery blocks of color labeled with a numerical code. Pantone chips are icons of design, lately found everywhere from Christmas ornaments to coffee mugs. But who is Pantone, and why have their colors taken on such authority? More

The talented designer Eva Zeisel passed away on December 30. To help honor her memory, we're rerunning Anna's 2009 "Retrospect" column on Eva's work.

An important designer from Modernism through Post-Modernism to today, Eva Zeisel's work is both seminal and accessible, classic and contemporary. More

We've seen how Christmas lights were originally candles placed on an evergreen bough to simulate stars. But it's interesting to think about how exciting a tree full of candles would have been in earlier times — and how smelly! Let's see what a luxury this basic light has historically been. More

The idea that Santa Claus comes down the chimney to deliver gifts is a relatively recent tradition — its spread is mostly associated with Clement Clark Moore's 1823 poem, "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" ("'Twas the night before Christmas...") And, though fire has been the heart of the home for thousands of years, chimneys are only a few hundred years old, themselves. Let's look at the evolution of the chimney. More

We've looked at the history of Christmas trees and holly in years past, but why do we have a tradition of kissing under the mistletoe? Some of the reasons might surprise you — I know I'll never look at a mistletoe berry the same way again… More