Mulliner Herbert H. The Decorative Arts in England, 1660-1780

London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1924. — 350 p.In many respects I regard the catalogue raisoiincc, which Colonel Mulliner has compiled, as the most important contribution yet offered towards the study of English decorative art. He has succeeded in showing what excellent work was produced in this country during that great movement in the decorative arts which enveloped both England and France from the latter part of the 17th until after the middle of the 18th Century. The results of that movement in France are weell known and have been fully appreciated, but the developments in this country have until lately almost entirely lacked similarly enthusiastic research. The Wallace Collection at Hertford House is, of course, far larger, but what the Wallace Collection has effected for French decorative art, the collection here described has - up to the limit of its size- fulfilled for English. A difference, however, is that whilst at Hertford House we see specimens with the character and style of which we are already well acquainted, few of us were aware that English work had reached the high standard of the objects here illustrated. Both collections embrace the work of the same period, the late 17th and the 18th Centuries, and it was then that decorative surroundings such as are aimed at to-day reached perfection. A collection of objects of that period, therefore, possesses far greater educational value than if - as in so many Museums - the earlier work is almost exclusively represented. Surely the primary objects of a Museum of Decorative Art are to improve taste and to be a guidance and help to the designers of articles for modern requirements? Oak credences and settles, Gothic tapestries, mazer bowls, etc., however interesting to the antiquary, possess little value for practical purposes.