Israeli designer HIlla Shamia has found a way to mix “oil and water” or aluminum and wood – two materials I’ve never seen fused together. The product designer has created a novel way to meld both poured aluminum with irregular wood chunks to create modern tables and benches with a warm industrial feel. Old world and new world in one.

There is an endless bounty of eye-catching gemstones throughout the world and this spectacular boulder opal is one unique beauty that looks like a shimmering crystal encased in a tree fossil. Its opalescent sheen seeps through the cracks of the seemingly wooden rings in lustrous hues of emerald green and aqua blue. Like something out of a fairy tale, the triangular piece radiates through an organic pattern mimicking the growth rings of tree.

The last series of Sam Taylor-Wood's that I have looked into is called Bram Stoker's Chair. This series links with her Suspended series in that they both show the artist seemingly poised in mid-air. These photos have the added element of the chair being there for her to balance on, giving her more of a physical connection with her surroundings.

Members of the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery fire a 41 gun salute in Hyde Park to mark the 60 anniversary of the accession of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 6, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Flower garlands, fruits and a pair of sandals of a woman who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), are placed by her relatives on the spot where she was cremated, as part of a ritual at a crematorium in New Delhi, India, April 30, 2021. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

Human Connection Award: People and Planet Ocean – Winner – Steve Woods. A free diver interacts with a sperm whale among a cloud of sargassum weed, Dominica. (Photo by Steve Woods/Ocean Photographer of the Year 2022)

A woman browses through kimonos for sale at Boroichi flea market in Tokyo December 15, 2014. In the 16th century, Boroichi was a place for farmers to buy and sell rags, known as boro, for mending clothes and weaving sandals. Now in its 436th year, the original spirit lingers, with about 700 stands hawking fabric, used clothes and piles of rags. Others sell kitchen tools, pottery, seaweed and spices. About 200,000 people flock to the market, which is only open for four mid-winter days a year – two in December and two in January. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Joaldunaks return in a trailer to their town at the end of Carnival between of the Pyrenees villages of Ituren and Zubieta, northern Spain, Monday, February 1, 2016. In one of the most ancient carnivals in Europe, dating from before the Roman empire, companies of Joaldunak (cowbells) made up of residents of two towns, Ituren and Zubieta, parade the streets costumed in sandals, lace petticoats, sheepskins around the waist and shoulders, coloured neckerchiefs, conical caps with ribbons and a hyssop of horsehair in their right hands and cowbells hung across their lower back. (Photo by Alvaro Barrientos/AP Photo)