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

Rarer than diamonds and more valuable than any other coloured jewels, a fine emerald represents natural beauty at its most beguiling. Jonathan Self journeys into the lustrous world of this revered gemstone

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

C ONSPICUITY: THE QUALITY of being noticeable or ...

The platinum blonde in British history

Whether winter-faded ferns, the spindly harvestman or the tyrannical stare of an irate chicken, through-lines from the prehistoric to our modern age are all around us in November, says John Lewis-Stempel