50 Fun Facts About Arts and Crafts

Which children's modelling compound was first sold in 1930s Cincinnati as a wallpaper cleaner?

Play-Doh was devised at the request of Kroger Grocery to lift coal residue off walls. When demand for the cleaner shrank after World War II, the putty found a second life as a toy.

In Japanese tradition, folding one thousand origami models of which bird is said to grant a wish?

The crane was said to live for a thousand years, so the tradition folds one for each year. Sadako Sasaki, a child survivor of Hiroshima, made the custom famous.

Papier-mâché, the craft of moulding pulp and paste, takes its name from French words meaning what?

Chewed paper is the literal meaning, though nobody chews anything: waste sheets are shredded and mixed with water and a binder. The technique has roots in ancient China.

Despite its name, the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman Conquest was made using which needlework technique?

Embroidery is the right word because the Bayeux scenes are stitched onto linen rather than woven into the cloth. A true tapestry has its design woven in.

Which Japanese craft mends broken pottery with lacquer and powdered gold so the cracks become a feature?

Kintsugi became so fashionable that some collectors were accused of deliberately smashing valuable pots so they could be repaired with golden seams.

Tyrian purple, the costly dye prized for the robes of Roman emperors, was extracted from which animals?

Sea snails of the murex family secrete the dye as mucus, and it took thousands of them to colour the trim of a single garment. That labour is why purple cloth signalled high rank.

Which sewing tool was retired as a Monopoly token in 2017, then voted back into the game in 2022?

The thimble returned in a fan vote that pushed out the T-Rex. Hasbro had retired it five years earlier along with the wheelbarrow and the boot.

Elmer the Bull, the face of Elmer's glue, was created as the mate of which dairy advertising mascot?

Elsie the Cow fronted Borden's dairy division, and the bovine couple appeared in adverts with their calves. Elmer became the symbol of Borden's adhesives in 1951.

Although people call it lead, the core of an ordinary pencil is a mix of clay and which mineral?

Graphite is blended with a clay binder, and changing the ratio changes how hard the pencil writes. The core never contained any of the metal it is named after.

Which wax-resist method of dyeing cloth, closely tied to Java, earned Indonesia a UNESCO heritage listing in 2009?

Batik makers draw or stamp wax onto fabric so those areas refuse the colour, then repeat the cycle to build up intricate patterns in several shades.

Former schoolteacher Alice Binney coined which art-supply brand name in 1903 from French words for chalk and oily?

Crayola joins craie, the French for chalk, to a suffix suggesting an oily texture. The "-ola" ending was fashionable in trade names of the day, as in pianola and Victrola.

Which American painter and art instructor hosted the PBS series The Joy of Painting from 1983 to 1994?

Bob Ross credited his quick wet-on-wet method to his own teacher and dedicated an early episode to him. Reruns of the show are still being broadcast decades later.

Which online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods was launched from Brooklyn in 2005?

Etsy got its name because founder Robert Kalin wanted a nonsense word, so the brand could be built from scratch. The company still has its headquarters in Brooklyn.

Which knotting craft, built on reef knots and half hitches, resurged in the 1970s for plant hangers?

Macramé was long a sailor's pastime: crews knotted hammocks, belts and bell fringes while idle at sea, then sold or bartered them in port.

Which low-fired reddish clay is the traditional material for garden flower pots and water pipes?

Terracotta means baked earth in Italian. It is fired at relatively low temperatures, and sculptors have long favoured it too: portrait busts in the material became fashionable in the 18th century.

On the traditional red-yellow-blue colour wheel taught to painters, which colour is the complement of red?

Green is the pair for red because each complementary pair on that wheel sets one primary against one secondary colour. Yellow faces purple, and blue faces orange.

Which English designer of the Strawberry Thief textile pattern was a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts movement?

William Morris based the design on the thrushes he found stealing fruit from his kitchen garden at Kelmscott Manor. It sold well despite being one of his firm's most expensive cottons.

In knitting, which basic stitch looks like a knit stitch seen from the other side of the fabric?

Purl stitches recede while knit stitches come forward, so alternating the two in columns produces ribbing, with its small pleats and its stretch.

Before oil paint replaced it around 1500, Italian painters bound their tempera pigments with which kitchen ingredient?

Egg yolk thinned with water makes a fast-drying paint whose colours do not darken with age the way oils do. Most surviving panel paintings attributed to Michelangelo use it.

Which fabric-colouring method, famous for its bright spirals, became a symbol of the 1960s counterculture?

Tie-dye binds folded cloth with string or rubber bands so the dye cannot reach every part. It became a fad in the late 1960s after rock stars such as Janis Joplin wore it.

Which designer's New York studio produced the stained-glass lamps that became icons of Art Nouveau around 1900?

Louis Comfort Tiffany got the credit for a century, but letters found later showed that many of the lamps were designed by Clara Driscoll, who worked in his studio.

Which blue stone, historically mined in Afghanistan, was ground to make the prized painters' pigment ultramarine?

Lapis lazuli gives only a greyish powder if simply ground, so makers kneaded it with wax and resins to draw out the colour. The finished pigment cost about ten times as much as the rock.

Which Japanese pottery tradition, famed for hand-moulded tea bowls, pulls its pots from the kiln while they still glow?

Raku pots leave the kiln while they still glow. In Japan they then cool in the open air, while Western potters often drop them into combustible material to smoke the surface.

Which inventor founded a famous sewing machine company in New York in 1851 and sold machines on instalment plans?

Isaac Singer was not the first to patent such a machine, as rivals including Elias Howe had beaten him to it. His edge was a practical design that adapted easily to home use.

Pysanky, wax-resist Easter eggs named from a verb meaning to write, are a national symbol of which country?

Ukraine's egg artists say the designs are written, not painted: hot beeswax is drawn onto the shell with a tool called a kistka before each dye bath.

Which textile, among the oldest known, is made by matting and pressing wool fibres together instead of weaving them?

Felt forms because heat, motion and moisture open the tiny scales on each fibre of fleece, and agitation makes them latch onto one another.

Which art, used today for wedding invitations and hand-lettered logos, takes its name from Greek for beautiful writing?

Calligraphy in the West is done mainly with pens and brushes, and the pen nibs may be flat, round or pointed. Carved stone inscriptions and memorial documents still call for it.

Which printing method, pushing ink through a mesh stencil, did Andy Warhol use for his 1962 Marilyn Monroe portraits?

Silkscreen let Warhol reproduce a publicity photograph of the actress again and again while keeping small variations between impressions. He began the series shortly after her death.

Which drawing toy of toothed plastic rings and wheels did British engineer Denys Fisher first sell in 1965?

Spirograph began as drawing machines that Fisher built from Meccano pieces in the early 1960s. Gear-based drawing toys were older still: one was advertised in the Sears catalog in 1908.

Which craft, named from a French verb meaning to cut out, seals paper pictures onto objects under coats of varnish?

Decoupage in its traditional form used 30 to 40 layers of varnish, sanded to a polish until the pictures looked painted on rather than stuck on.

Which island in the Venetian Lagoon became a glassmaking centre after Venice moved its glassmakers there in 1291?

Murano first won fame for glass beads and mirrors. Aventurine glass was invented there, and glassmaking is still the island's main industry.

What do potters call the process of shaping a lump of clay on a spinning wheel?

Throwing begins with centring the lump, then opening a hole in it and raising the walls as it turns. The method only became possible once a fast wheel had been developed.

Which English potter, grandfather of Charles Darwin, developed creamware and Jasperware in the 18th century?

Josiah Wedgwood saw each of his inventions quickly copied by rivals. His daughter Susannah married Robert Darwin and became the mother of the naturalist.

Which crochet motif, worked in rounds from the centre outward, is joined in multiples to make Afghan blankets?

Granny square clothing is a cyclical fashion that peaked in the 1970s. The motif has resisted automation: it is traditionally made by hand rather than by machine.

Which folk art did whalers practise in their spare time, engraving sperm whale teeth and bones?

Scrimshaw at first meant the handy tools that sailors made from whale byproducts, and only later the artworks. It probably began on whaling ships in the late 18th century.

Which Frenchman patented a weaving machine in 1804 whose chains of punched cards later inspired Charles Babbage?

Joseph Marie Jacquard had each card stand for one row of a design, and a silk portrait of him took 24,000 of them to weave. Babbage owned a copy of that portrait.

Papel picado, colourful banners chiselled from stacks of tissue paper, is a traditional folk art of which country?

Mexico's papel picado makers cut 40 to 50 sheets at once with a small mallet and chisels, following a template. The banners dress altars during the Day of the Dead.

In a traditional three-layer quilt, what is the padded filling between the top and the backing called?

Batting, also known as wadding, is held in place by the stitches that run through all the layers. Trapunto work pushes in extra filling to raise parts of a design.

Which Scottish island names the stranded colourwork knitting that the future Edward VIII made fashionable in 1921?

Fair Isle jumpers took off after the Prince of Wales wore them in public. Purists reserve the name for Shetland's own patterns, though it is now applied loosely to any stranded colour knitting.

Which Japanese craft, whose name joins words for knitted and wrapping, produces small crocheted stuffed creatures?

Amigurumi are usually crocheted in a continuous spiral rather than joined rounds, which avoids a visible stripe. The second half of the name also appears in nuigurumi, a sewn stuffed toy.

Which craft, whose Greek-derived name means writing with fire, decorates wood with marks from a heated tool?

Pyrography is also sold as pokerwork or wood burning, and it is popular with gourd crafters, who burn designs onto dried hard-shell gourds.

Which craft, named for the bird feathers once used as its tools, rolls narrow paper strips into decorative shapes?

Quilling has a long past: French and Italian nuns are recorded using the torn edges of gilt-edged holy books for it between the 12th and 16th centuries.

What name is given to the small cubes of stone or coloured glass that make up a traditional mosaic?

Tesserae could be tiny: the finest Greco-Roman work used cubes of 4 millimetres or less, made up in workshops as small panels and then carried to the site.

On a loom the vertical threads held in tension are the warp; what are the horizontal threads drawn through them called?

Weft is drawn over and under the warp, which stays stretched on the frame. The pair doubles as a metaphor: the warp and weft of something is its basic fabric.

The dreamcatcher, a willow hoop woven with a web, comes from the traditions of which Native American people?

Ojibwe legend credits the web charms to Spider Woman, who takes care of the children, and the word for a dreamcatcher is a form of the word for spider.

Which Finnish company is best known for the orange-handled scissors it first made in 1967?

Fiskars settled the handle colour by an internal vote among several prototypes, and later registered the shade as a trademark in both Finland and the United States.

Which permanent marker brand, launched in 1964, became the pen of choice aboard the International Space Station?

Sharpie pens keep working in zero gravity whichever way they are held, as astronaut Chris Hadfield noted. The Sanford Ink Company launched the brand as the first pen-style permanent marker.

Which paper-decorating technique, called ebru in Turkey, floats colours on a liquid and lifts the pattern with a sheet?

Marbling artists steer the floating colours by fanning them, blowing through a straw or stirring with a single human hair before the sheet goes down.

Which sticky tape brand is said to take its name from a jibe about penny-pinching bosses skimping on adhesive?

Scotch was then slang for miserly. In 3M's telling, a tester of Richard Drew's early masking tape, glued only at its edges, sent him back to his bosses to ask for more adhesive.

Which lace-making craft uses a small boat-shaped shuttle to build rings and chains from knotted thread?

Tatting is called chiacchierino in Italian, meaning chatty, while one German name for it means work of the little boat, after the shape of the shuttle.