P – Opus

Plennie Wingo

Plennie Wingo was an unemployed Texas café owner who attempted to walk around the world backwards during the Great Depression. Wearing spectacles fitted with small rear-view mirrors, he set out from Santa Monica in 1931 and walked roughly 8,000 miles across the United States and Europe before authorities stopped him in Istanbul. He financed the journey by selling signed postcards to curious strangers. Eighteen months and thirteen pairs of shoes later, he returned home with four dollars.

Patiala Necklace

The Patiala Necklace was a five-tiered platinum necklace made by Cartier in 1928 for Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala. It contained 2,930 diamonds, Burmese rubies and the 234.65-carat yellow De Beers diamond—then the seventh-largest polished diamond in the world. The necklace disappeared from the Patiala treasury around 1948. Its central diamond resurfaced at auction in 1982; the gemless platinum framework turned up in a London second-hand jewellery shop in 1998. Cartier bought the remains and rebuilt the missing grandeur with synthetic stones and replicas.

Pele’s hair

Pele’s hair consists of fine golden strands of volcanic glass produced when droplets from lava fountains are stretched through the air and cool almost instantly. Named after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, the fibres can travel kilometres downwind and collect in tangled clumps on trees and fences. They look soft enough to comb but each strand is brittle, sharp glass.

Pyrosomes

Pyrosomes are hollow, translucent tubes that drift through warm oceans and glow when disturbed. Although each resembles a single gelatinous animal, it is actually a colony of thousands of tiny cloned organisms arranged around a shared central cavity. Each member filters seawater for food before expelling it into the tube, their combined jets slowly propelling the entire colony. Some pyrosomes grow to 18 metres long: thousands of bodies travelling as one illuminated sleeve.

Phi Ta Khon

Phi Ta Khon is a ghost festival held in Dan Sai, northeastern Thailand. Villagers parade in patchwork costumes and towering masks traditionally assembled from sticky-rice steamers and coconut husks. According to local tradition, the spirits first appeared during the joyful return of Prince Vessantara, emerging from the forest to join the celebration.

Peruvian Scissors Dance

The Scissors Dance is a ritual competition from the southern Peruvian Andes. Dressed in embroidered suits covered with sequins and mirrors, dancers perform increasingly difficult steps while striking two loose metal blades together to the rhythm of a violin and harp. Rival performers take turns trying to surpass one another, sometimes for hours.

Paranja

The paranja was a Central Asian covering once common among women in cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand. A long robe was worn over the head rather than the arms, leaving its empty sleeves hanging down the back. The face disappeared behind a separate screen woven from black horsehair.

Picós

Picós are enormous, hand-painted sound systems from Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Built from stacked speakers and amplifiers, each has its own name, visual identity and devoted following. Their fronts are painted with fluorescent animals, spaceships, warriors and whatever else might adequately announce several thousand watts.

Pen & Pixel

Pen & Pixel was a Houston design studio that gave Southern rap its preferred reality: one in which everything was chrome, flaming, diamond-covered and slightly larger than Earth. Founded by brothers Shawn and Aaron Brauch in 1992, the studio produced thousands of album covers for labels including No Limit and Cash Money.

Puya raimondii

Puya raimondii, the Queen of the Andes, is the world’s largest bromeliad. It spends between 60 and 100 years growing a vast rosette of spiny leaves before producing a flower spike up to six metres long, bearing more than 100,000 flowers and millions of seeds. After this single performance, the plant dies, leaving its enormous stalk standing for years. A lifetime of preparation followed by a rather excessive finale.

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

Papa