Silverware, with its glistering surface and ornate designs, dresses the table like no other material and has an unmatched capacity for turning a meal into an occasion, as Matthew Dennison discovers

Johannes Vermeer brightened his native Delft with luminous pictures of women caught in intimate moments, but the serenity of his work, of which he produced remarkably little, is at odds with a life mired in debt, as Carla Passino discovers

Art Nouveau masters such as Louis Comfort Tiffany and Émile Gallé turned the most fragile of materials into iridescent masterpieces that shimmered like seashells or glittered like Byzantine mosaics, as Matthew Dennison discovers

Andrew Graham-Dixon tells Carla Passino why he thinks we have read Vermeer wrong all along– and who the Girl with a Pearl Earring really is

The gargantuan, bewildering Louvre

Painting a local cricket match, Sherree Valentine-Daines received an invitation that changed her career and led her to become artist-in-residence at Goodwood