For his first couture collection with Dior, creative director Jonathan Anderson demonstrated both his respect for the brand’s illustrious history and his ability to propel it forward with ensembles like this voluminous, structured top and asymmetrical skirt embroidered with yellow and white velvet flowers.

Layering decadent materials, including gold and mother-of-pearl, over more humble ones such as gesso, cardboard, and jute, Nancy Lorenz creates shimmering works that break down the boundary between art and craft, as seen in large-scale installations like her special commission at the Church of the Artists in Rome and Garden (2009), a ten-panel painting made for a private residence in Mumbai.

Requiring more than 1,000 hours of work by a team of Métiers d’Art master craftsmen to produce, the Escale au Mont Fuji pocket watch by Louis Vuitton boasts one of the maison’s most intricate movements, including a boat gliding and trunks opening to reveal monogram flowers. Housed within a white-gold case set with 60 baguette-cut colored sapphires, the timepiece is an unprecedented example of haute horlogerie.

Less in-your-face than the artist’s formaldehyde works or medicine cabinets, Damien Hirst’s “Cherry Blossom” series of paintings bridges the gap between figuration and abstraction with a thick application of color to capture what he has called “the insane visual transience of beauty,” just as apparent in the giclée prints.

Brooklyn artisan Stephen Antonson puts a fresh spin on plaster with his timeless lighting designs and furniture pieces, such as the Half Moon coffee table, which juxtaposes creamy white disks with a smooth slab of oak.

Known for her monumental sculptures, late Mexican artist Yvonne Domenge fashioned carbon steel into monochromatic ribbons that ripple and twist into spheres, totems, and abstract flowers, as deftly rendered in Lily (2008).

Finding inspiration in Byzantine mosaics, Buccellati exhibits its extraordinary craftsmanship and artistry in the hand-engraved Mosaico bracelet, a textured, luminous white- and yellow-gold cuff decorated in a geometric tapestry of emeralds and diamonds.

Created by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in the early 1900s, the monumental Stoclet Frieze is preserved in the dining room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, a UNESCO World Heritage site not open to the public. The 15 mosaic panels adorn three walls with a hypnotic compilation of embossed metals, enamel, and pearl as well as semiprecious jewels, as illustrated in this preparatory study, which is on view at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.