Virtually explore the V&A Museum with Smarthistory as your guide
Some background
videos + essays
Link to the V&A Museum's website
Marwan tiraz
The fragments of the Marwan tiraz once formed a large and impressive cloth that emphasized the import and status of its wearer.
William Morris, The Green Dining Room
The Green Dining Room's harmonious color-scheme, craftsmanship, and medieval vibe shows Morris’s design style at its finest.
Horst P. Horst, Mainbocher Corset, Paris
Horst's Mainbocher Corset photograph journeyed across oceans and time to transform Vogue into a concept and a verb.
Conservation: The Nasrid plasterwork collection at the V&A
A conservator at the V&A discusses new discoveries that have uncovered new information on their materials, techniques, history and provenance
Conservation: Cast of the Pórtico de la Gloria
In 1866, the Victoria & Albert Museum commissioned an Italian plaster maker to journey to Spain to make a copy of a monument of Romanesque art. See how the museum takes care of it more than 150 years later.
Conservation: Indian jama
Follow V&A's conservation team as they carefully clean and repair a magnificent 19th century jama – a style of garment worn by men in India for centuries.
Giovanni Pisano, Pisa Pulpit
Some distortions are deliberate. This pulpit has its critics, but it coheres in real life—just not in photos.
Illustration from the Akbarnama
Under Akbar the Great, the Mughal style of painting blended Indian, Persian, and Western artistic traditions.
Tipu’s Tiger
Made for a sultan, this unusual automaton emblematizes the fierce hostility between British and Indian rulers.
Illustration from the Akbarnama
Under Akbar the Great, the Mughal style of painting blended Indian, Persian, and Western artistic traditions.
