Beauty and craftsmanship can be seen in the furniture, metalwork, glassware, ceramics, textiles and jewellery on show.At today's expos, each country hosts elaborate pavilions which focus on nation branding and cultural exchange.
LEGEND held that the main gate of Timbuktu's Sidi Yahya mosque, a wood-panelled affair with metalwork cast in the shape of crescent moons, would open only at the end of time.
The museum's Great Court holds a 1953 Volkswagen Beetle, an icon whose origins can be traced back to the 16th-century origins of Germany's tradition of fine metalwork: Vorsprung durch Technik, Mr MacGregor reminds us, is not a new idea.
According to David Crane, the boss of NRG Energy, an American firm that owns eight solar power plants, including Agua Caliente, "If you're a solar cellmaker, the world is a cruelly Darwinian place".To survive, firms will need to keep cutting costs, especially in the non-panel parts of their product, including metalwork and wiring.
Giuseppe Eskenazi, the pre-eminent dealer in Ming and Qing ware, for example, put on an exceptional show of early Chinese metalwork in gold and silver.
Some 300 objects and art works are displayed inside, including superb examples of metalwork and ceramics, textiles and calligraphy, painting and sculpture.
In the mid-1970s, in a landmark judgment, a British court ruled that a restored Bentley Old Number One of which the only truly original surviving parts were the chassis plate and a few square inches of metalwork around it could indeed be deemed to be the original car.
With a yearly turnover of £150,000-200,000, the answer is yes.But it's the design and making of metalwork, not money, that drives him.
He packed up some 46,000 exhibits, ranging from ceramics to metalwork and human bones, and shipped them back to Yale for analysis and display.
Brunei is particularly renowned for its metalwork.
(see metalwork; goldwork).
