The people behind the craft

Aaron Franklin

Barbecue

Pitmaster of Franklin Barbecue in Austin whose oak-smoked brisket drew hours-long lines and a James Beard award.

Adrian Frutiger

Type Design — historical

Designed the Univers and Frutiger typefaces, the latter engineered for legibility on airport signage at speed and distance.

Akira Kurosawa

Film Direction — historical

Directed Seven Samurai and Rashomon, revolutionizing editing, weather as drama, and the visual grammar of action cinema.

Antonio Stradivari

Luthier — historical

Crafted violins in Cremona whose tonal power and clarity remain the acoustic benchmark no maker has convincingly surpassed.

Azzedine Alaia

Couture — historical

Perfected body-sculpting construction, cutting stretch garments that fit like a second skin and defined 1980s glamour.

Bartolomeo Cristofori

Instrument Maker — historical

Invented the piano around 1700 by devising a hammer action that let a keyboard play both soft and loud.

Ben Burtt

Sound Design

Created the sound of the lightsaber, R2-D2, and WALL-E, inventing the modern craft of narrative sound design.

Bill Amberg

Leatherwork

British leather designer-maker whose London studio produces hand-stitched bags and architectural leather interiors.

Bob Kramer

Bladesmithing

One of few American Master Bladesmiths making kitchen knives, whose chef's knives fetch thousands and sell by lottery.

Brian Eno

Producer / Composer

Coined and defined ambient music while producing landmark albums for Bowie, Talking Heads and U2.

Bruno Verjus

Head Chef & Founder

Bruno Verjus is the head chef and founder of Table by Bruno Verjus, the acclaimed Paris restaurant ranked No. 8 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list and holder of two Michelin stars. His creative French cuisine has established him as one of Paris's most innovative chefs.

Charles and Ray Eames

Furniture Design — historical

Revolutionized furniture with molded plywood and fibreglass, designing the Eames Lounge Chair and shaping mid-century modernism.

Coco Chanel

Couture — historical

Liberated women's fashion with jersey, trousers, the little black dress and the collarless tweed suit.

Constantin Brancusi

Sculpture — historical

Stripped sculpture down to pure, polished essential form, founding a modernist language of abstraction.

Cristobal Balenciaga

Couture — historical

Mastered architectural construction and volume, sculpting garments that stood away from the body in revolutionary silhouettes.

Dabiz Muñoz

Chef & Founder, DiverXO

David Muñoz Rosillo, also known as Dabiz Muñoz, is a Spanish chef specializing in avant-garde cuisine. He is the owner and head chef of DiverXO, which is the only restaurant in Madrid with three Michelin stars as of 2025. He was named the 'Best Chef in the World' by The Best Chef Awards for three consecutive years. Source: Wikipedia (David Muñoz (chef))

Dale Chihuly

Glass Art

Turned blown glass into monumental installation art, freeing the medium from tabletop craft into architectural spectacle.

Dieter Rams

Industrial Design

Defined Braun's product language and codified the ten principles of good design that shaped modern industrial aesthetics.

Dominique Crenn

Chef and Owner

Dominique Crenn is a three-Michelin-starred chef known for her modern vision of fine French cuisine and her commitment to 'poetic culinaria.' She made history as the first female chef in the US to receive three Michelin stars.

Dominique Persoone

Chocolate

Bruges chocolatier of The Chocolate Line, known for radical bean-to-bar experiments and provocative flavour pairings.

Edmund de Waal

Ceramics

Porcelain artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, known for vast installations of pale thrown vessels in vitrines.

El Anatsui

Sculpture

Ghanaian sculptor who stitches thousands of flattened bottle caps and aluminium seals into shimmering, drapeable metal tapestries the scale of building facades.

Elena Arzak

Chef & Co-owner

Elena Arzak, daughter of Juan Mari Arzak, trained in Europe's top kitchens including Pierre Gagnaire and El Bulli, and now co-leads the three-Michelin-starred Arzak restaurant.

Eric Ripert

Chef and Co-Owner

Renowned chef with expertise in French and seafood cuisine

Es Devlin

Stage Design

Reinvented concert and opera staging with kinetic sculptural sets projecting light and film for Beyonce, U2 and the Royal Opera.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Architecture — historical

Pioneered organic architecture with Fallingwater and Prairie-style homes that dissolved the wall between building and landscape.

Geraldine Rodríguez

Chef de Cuisine

Childhood spent between school and family restaurant. Learned cooking and management from an early age. Refined skills with Quique Dacosta before joining Quintonil in 2015.

Giorgio Cravero

Cheese Affinage

Latest-generation Parmigiano-Reggiano affineur in Bra whose family selects and ages the wheels prized by the world's top kitchens.

Hayao Miyazaki

Animation

Co-founded Studio Ghibli and directed Spirited Away, hand-drawing worlds of unmatched emotional and natural detail.

Heinz Reitbauer

Chef and Patron

Heinz Reitbauer (born 23 August 1970 in Vienna) is an Austrian chef and patron of Steirereck, consistently ranked among Vienna's finest dining establishments. From 2014 to 2017, Steirereck was named Austria's best restaurant.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Photography

Made conceptually rigorous long-exposure photographs of seascapes, theatres and dioramas that meditate on time itself.

Ikutaro Kakehashi

Instrument Maker — historical

Founded Roland and co-created MIDI, plus the TR-808 and TB-303 machines that built modern electronic music.

Issey Miyake

Fashion / Textile — historical

Fused technology and craft to invent Pleats Please and A-POC, garments engineered from single threads and heat-set pleats.

J Dilla

Producer — historical

Reprogrammed hip-hop's rhythmic feel by deliberately un-quantizing the MPC, creating a loose, human 'drunk' swing.

James Dyson

Product Engineering

Invented the bagless cyclonic vacuum cleaner after building 5,127 prototypes, reinventing a stagnant household appliance.

James Hoffmann

Coffee

2007 World Barista Champion and author of The World Atlas of Coffee whose YouTube channel became default global coffee education.

Jefferson Rueda

Chef & Owner, A Casa do Porco

Chef and owner of A Casa do Porco in São Paulo, Brazil, which was ranked #2 in Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants 2023 and recognized for its nose-to-tail pork cuisine drawing on Brazilian culinary traditions.

Jim McEwan

Whisky

Master distiller who resurrected Islay's shuttered Bruichladdich distillery in 2001 and became one of Scotch's most revered noses.

Jiro Ono

Sushi

Founder of the three-Michelin-star Sukiyabashi Jiro in Ginza, subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Jony Ive

Industrial Design

Led the design of the iMac, iPod, and iPhone, making the seamless minimalist object the dominant form of consumer technology.

Juan Contreras

Chef Pâtissier

Juan Contreras is the Chef Pâtissier at Atelier Crenn, where he creates dishes that evoke emotions and stimulate the senses. He has worked with Dominique Crenn since the opening of Atelier Crenn and has been a finalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef.

Juan Mari Arzak

Chef & Founder

Legendary Basque chef who helmed the Arzak restaurant in San Sebastián for over 50 years, pioneering Nueva Cocina Vasca and earning three Michelin stars.

Junghyun Park

Head Chef, Atomix

Head chef of Atomix, a two-Michelin-star Korean fine dining restaurant in NoMad, New York City, featured in The World's 50 Best Restaurants.

Junya Watanabe

Fashion Design

Pushed technical textile experimentation and radical pattern-cutting under his own line within Comme des Garcons.

Kathe Kollwitz

Printmaking — historical

Made prints and drawings of grief, poverty and war that gave working-class suffering unflinching monumental dignity.

Katsushika Hokusai

Printmaking — historical

Created 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' and the woodblock series that shaped ukiyo-e and later European modernism.

Kengo Kuma

Architecture

Developed a 'weak architecture' of layered timber and traditional joinery, realized at the Tokyo National Stadium and countless wooden lattices.

Kyle Connaughton

Farm-driven Cuisine

Chef of three-Michelin-star SingleThread in Sonoma, blending Japanese kaiseki discipline with a five-acre estate farm.

Lee 'Scratch' Perry

Producer — historical

Invented dub's studio-as-instrument approach at his Black Ark, drenching reggae in echo, reverb and phantom space.

Leo Fender

Instrument Maker — historical

Designed the mass-producible Telecaster, Stratocaster and Precision Bass, making the solid-body electric guitar a household object.

Les Paul

Guitarist / Inventor — historical

Pioneered multitrack recording and overdubbing while championing the solid-body electric guitar that bears his name.

Lino Tagliapietra

Glassblowing

Murano-trained maestro who broke tradition by teaching guarded Venetian techniques to Americans, transforming studio glass worldwide.

Luis Barragan

Architecture — historical

Fused Mexican vernacular with modernism using saturated colour, water, and light to create emotionally charged spaces.

Madeleine Vionnet

Couture — historical

Invented the bias cut, draping fabric diagonally so it flowed and clung to the body without corsetry.

Magdalene Odundo

Ceramics

Kenyan-born British potter whose hand-built, unglazed burnished vessels fuse African, Grecian and Nubian forms into taut, figure-like silhouettes.

Manolo Blahnik

Shoemaking

Spanish shoemaker who hand-carves his own lasts and heels, elevating the stiletto into an object of architectural precision and wit.

Marc Newson

Industrial Design

Created the Lockheed Lounge chair and designed everything from Qantas cabins to watches with sculptural, liquid-metal forms.

Mario Hermoso

Fundador

Jugador de fútbol y empresario con interés en la cocina y gastronomía.

Masa Takayama

Sushi

Chef of Masa in New York, the only US sushi restaurant with three Michelin stars, famed for an uncompromising omakase.

Mira Nakashima

Woodworking

Daughter and successor of George Nakashima, leading the New Hope studio making live-edge furniture that honours the 'soul of the tree.'