Jack Kelly

“A pattern combining elegance and solidity to a degree hitherto unknown,” read the advertisement in the Illustrated London News for the Staunton chess set upon its introduction in 1849. In one of history’s first celebrity endorsements, Howard Staunton—a British chess master and Shakespearean scholar—lent his name to the chessmen released by the game company Jaques […]

In the year 1900, Ada and Minna Everleigh relocated their already-flourishing enterprise from Omaha, Neb., to Chicago, a larger city that offered the sisters the prospect of even greater riches, if they could establish a clientele among the wealthiest citizens. To that end, the Everleighs spared no expense in decorating and furnishing their new place […]

Andrew Hoyem believes that when books are concerned, style can enhance substance—that riveting tales and profound truths benefit from refined presentations. At Arion Press, his San Francisco publishing house, he employs the centuries-old letterpress method of printing because it imparts a three-dimensional quality to the ink, and the cotton paper that he prefers feels more […]

“Pull!” I bark, but before I can draw a bead on the target, it plummets into the scrub oak, and my shot sails toward the heavens. Scoring a hit seems a remote possibility, for I apparently lack the necessary intuition and panache that skeet shooting demands. But this realization fails to diminish the fun of trying […]

Leaving Their Mark Look closely and you will see a hunter, dressed in skins, working a ramrod down the muzzle of his flintlock. At his feet is a bird dog, and behind him are mountains and trees. This scene, with all its detail, is engraved on the underside of a shotgun trigger guard that is […]

The invitations have been sent. The caterer and band have been selected. And long before the party plans were completed, arrangements were made for geysers of colored fire to erupt and blossoms of incandescence to open across the darkened sky, and for the display to culminate in a crescendo that presses the limits of the […]