After my experience at The Met, I spent the next few months viewing and considering as much beauty as I could. I went to more museums. I spent weeks researching obscure Baroque furniture makers, legendary luthiers, prominent architects, naturalist illustrators, Italian car designers, and philosophers of aesthetics. What I came out the other side... See more

I realized that the craftsmen of yore had elevated weaponry, a category of merely utilitarian objects, into some of the most exquisite things I had ever seen. They had taken objects of ubiquitous, vital importance in their respective eras and made them beautiful. My initial aesthetic shock was quickly replaced by jealousy — no one was lifting the... See more