New York’s Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts was founded in 1993 by art historian and educator Susan Weber (then Susan Weber Soros and married to the investment entrepreneur George Soros). Since its establishment, the Bard has been at the forefront of academic studies in the decorative arts, run in tandem with an exhibition program. Past exhibitions and publications include major studies of William Kent, William Beckford, Thomas Hope, E.W. Godwin (the subject of Weber’s PhD), as well as many others covering the decorative arts and design of Europe and the Americas.

The history is arranged by period and then geographic region. This allows for comparative assessments across cultures and, importantly, recognises trade and the resulting artistic influences between countries. The chapter arrangement and useful colour coding also allow for regions to be read as linear histories. Appropriately, the volume does not begin with Europe but with China, which had supplied Europe with luxury items from the time of the Roman Empire and in the fourteenth century was undergoing a period of rapid change in the new Ming dynasty. China at this period was also producing works of great technical and aesthetic sophistication and by 1600 had an enormous population, estimated at 200 million, with a corresponding demand for goods. The opening chapters on China present stylistic and design changes in objects within the social and political context, developments in technology, supply and demand. This finely nuanced analysis of material culture is maintained throughout the publication.

Ardabil Carpet

While some very familiar objects are illustrated – the famous Cellini salt cellar in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the ‘Ardabil’ carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum – refreshingly the writers, in advancing their arguments, have chosen less familiar works. The objects illustrated are presented within the broad narrative sweep, which also brings detail and analysis about specific works.

A fine description of the emergence of Renaissance Europe from the Middle Ages makes the point that Northern Europe was slow to adopt the visual language of the antique past as it stressed continuity and tradition: ‘For northern Europeans, there was thus no “Middle Ages”, and the centuries, roughly from the fifth to the fifteenth, denigrated as “barbaric” by Italian humanists, were celebrated for the achievements in political organization, technology, engineering, and architecture.’ And further: ‘Classicism was, therefore, but one of several stylistic choices available in societies that were increasingly … subject to … artistic influences from within and across cultures.’

The writing, succinct and lively, neatly contextualises historical periods, and is not devoid of humour, a quality curiously absent from much art-historical writing. Having described the enfilade at Versailles, the author leaves us at the Hall of Mirrors: ‘The gallery’s sheer magnificence could not fail to impress visiting dignitaries who, having metaphorically traversed the solar system, found themselves suspended between war and peace, with ample opportunity to reflect upon their choice.’ The writing contains many neat summaries of the historical background: ‘In England, in the fifteenth century alone, aristocratic coalitions deposed no less than eight monarchs in the near-continuous civil conflagration known as the Wars of the Roses.’

Central to any study of the decorative arts are developments in technology. This aspect features from the opening chapter on China and is particularly well covered in the section dealing with Europe from 1830 to 1900, when the industrialisation of Europe and the inevitable advance of mechanisation changed production methods and lowered costs. Technical developments – printing of textiles and wallpapers, the invention of papier mâché, machines for cutting timber veneers – are themselves presented as drivers of change, rather than simply as changes in style and taste. American scholarship in material culture led the way in studies of the decorative arts during the twentieth century and informs this revisionist history. By presenting them in a much more rounded and richly contextual framework, stylistic change is only one of many factors in explaining the decorative objects that are so much a part of our daily lives.

History of Design is a remarkable achievement and should play a central role for encouraging the ongoing studies of decorative arts and design among students, and, one hopes, a broader public. Let us hope that the enthusiasm at the Bard continues, along with the generous financial support from foundations, so that Australia and Oceania can become part of this (nearly) world history of decorative arts and design in the next edition.