One of the highlights of our trip to Japan was our visit to the Katsura Imperial Villa Gardens, Kyoto. Not being the organised sorts we got a very early train to stand in a queue for tickets later in the day. But we were rewarded with one of the great gardens of the world where the pine trees have names and even the pebbles in the stream are apparently aesthetically...

  Inis Meáin is a tiny and remote island thirty miles off the Western Coast of Ireland, a slab of rock with just 200 inhabitants. It is the middlemost of the Aran Islands and home to the Inis Meáin Knitting Company, founded in 1976 by Tarlach de Blácam and his wife Áine Ní Chonghaile, an island native. Drawing on tradition, where for centuries the local fishermen’s clothing was designed, handknitted and woven by the islanders, the couple started out with a small factory and just six...

In a normal looking Viennese street in a traditional Altbau apartment block is hidden the Werkstatt Carl Auböck. Originally one of the Viennese metal workshops producing traditional decorations the Werkstatt was transformed after Carl Auböck II went to study at the Bauhaus. Using great imagination and wit the designs from after this period have become collectors items around the world. Most famously the paperweight set was seen on the writing desk...