safety glass

these are kageyama, the stencils with which kimono fabric is made.

this is kimono fabric.

edouard benedictus was a designer of fabric and wallpaper patterns.

his rug designs are of my favorites. here are some. and here is where to get in touch with the arts and crafts home, which grows more comprehensive all the time, with biographies of the artists/craftspeople of the period, and and increasingly wide selection of examples.

he also coordinates a service wherein rugs of distant eras can be woven anew for you. god i wish i was rich.

so why, you might ask, is this post entitled 'safety glass'? In 1903, a French chemist called Edouard Benedictus dropped a glass flask on the floor of his laboratory. The flask shattered but, to Benedictus's surprise, the glass did not fly apart. Rather, the shards and splinters stayed together in the shape of the original flask. The flask had contained a solution of cellulose nitrate. A thin film of this chemical had been left behind in the flask and formed a lining. This lining was strong enough to hold the glass together when it broke. Benedictus kept and labelled the interesting flask. He thought little more of it until a few weeks later, when he read of two accidents in which motorists had crashed and been seriously injured by flying glass. (more)

yup. same guy.