The decorative arts are a traditional term for a number of arts and crafts A craft is a skill, especially involving practical arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art for the making of ornamental and functional works in a great range of materials including ceramic A ceramic is an inorganic, non-metallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous . Because most common ceramics are crystalline, the definition of ceramic is often restricted to inorganic crystalline materials, as opposed to the non-, wood Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many plants. It has been used for centuries for both fuel and as a construction material for several types of living areas such as houses. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. In the strict sense wood is produced as, glass Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle, and often optically transparent. Glass is commonly used for windows, bottles, and eyewear; examples of glassy materials include soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, and aluminium oxynitride. The term glass developed in the late Roman, metal A metal is a chemical element that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat and forms cations and ionic bonds with non-metals. In chemistry, a metal is an element, compound, or alloy characterized by high electrical conductivity. In a metal, atoms readily lose electrons to form positive ions (cations). Those ions are surrounded by, textiles A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw wool fibres, linen, cotton, or other material on a spinning wheel to produce long strands. Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or pressing fibres together and many others. The field includes ceramics In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean art objects such as figures, tiles, and tableware made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as artifacts in archaeology. They may be made by one, glassware This list of glassware includes drinking vessels , tableware, such as dishes, and flatware used to set a table for eating a meal, general glass items such as vases, and glasses used in the catering industry whether made of glass or plastics such as polystyrene and polycarbonate, furniture Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things. Storage furniture such as a nightstand often makes use of doors, drawers, shelves and locks to contain,, furnishings, interior design The interior design process follows a systematic and coordinated methodology, including research, analysis and integration of knowledge into the creative process, whereby the needs and resources of the client are satisfied to produce an interior space that fulfills the project goals, but not usually architecture A wider definition may comprise all design activity, from the macro-level to the micro-level (construction details and furniture). Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. It requires the creative. The decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the "fine arts Fine art describes an art form developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"", namely, painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects may be used. In art the term describes both the act and the result which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper,, drawing Drawing is a visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint. An artist who practices or works in drawing may be, photography Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor. Photography uses foremost radiation in the UV, visible and near-IR spectrum. For common purposes the term light is used in stead of radiation. Light, and large-scale sculpture Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials, typically stone such as marble, metal, glass, or wood, or plastic materials such as clay, textiles, polymers and softer metals. The term has been extended to works including sound, text and light, which generally have no function other than to be looked at. Some distinguish between decorative and fine art based on functionality, intended purpose, importance, status as a unique creation, or single-artist production. Decorative arts, or furnishings, may be fixed (for example, wallpaper), or moveable (for example, lamps). Applied art Applied art is the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use. Whereas fine arts serve as intellectual stimulation to the viewer or academic sensibilities, the applied arts incorporate design and creative ideals to objects of utility, such as a cup, magazine or decorative park bench. There is considerable overlap includes the decorative arts but also graphic design Graphic design is a creative process — most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form — undertaken in order to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that and other categories, such as industrial design Industrial design is a combination of applied art and applied science, whereby the aesthetics, ergonomics and usability of mass-produced products may be improved for marketability and production. The role of an industrial designer is to create and execute design solutions towards problems of form, usability, user ergonomics, engineering, marketing,, which may overlap with decorative art. In general the term "decorative arts" is not much used of contemporary work, which tends to be called design No generally-accepted definition of “design” exists, and the term has different connotations in different fields . Informally, “a design” (noun) refers to a plan for the construction of an object (as in architectural blueprints, circuit diagrams and sewing patterns) and “to design” (verb) refers to making this plan. However, one can instead. In art history Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and look. This includes the "major" arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the "minor" arts of ceramics, furniture, and other decorative the term minor arts is often used for the decorative arts.

Distinction from fine arts

The distinction between decorative and fine arts has essentially risen from the post-Renaissance The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the art of the West, where it is for the most part meaningful. It is much less so when applied to the art of other cultures and periods, where the most highly-regarded works often include those in "decorative" media, or all works are in such media. For example, Islamic art Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by culturally Islamic populations. It includes fields as varied as architecture, calligraphy, painting, and ceramics, among others in many periods and places consists entirely of the decorative arts, as does the art of many traditional cultures, and in Chinese art Chinese art has varied throughout its ancient history, divided into periods by the ruling dynasties of China and changing technology. Different forms of art have been influenced by great philosophers, teachers, religious figures and even political leaders. Chinese art encompasses fine arts, folk arts and performance arts the distinction is less useful than in Europe. Even in Europe, the distinction is unhelpful for Early Medieval art The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art history in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the artists crafts, and the artists themselves, where although "fine arts" such as manuscript illumination and monumental sculpture The term monumental sculpture is often used in art history and criticism, but not always consistently. It combines two concepts, one of function, and one of size, and may include an element of a third more subjective concept. It is often used for all sculptures that are large. Human figures that are perhaps half life-size or above would usually be existed, the most prestigious works, commissioned from the best artists, tended to be in goldsmith A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare. Historically goldsmiths have also made flatware, platters, goblets, decorative work or cast metals such as bronze. Large-scale wall-paintings were apparently much less regarded, relatively crudely executed, and rarely mentioned in contemporary sources; they were probably seen as a cheap but inferior substitute for mosaic Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, normally roughly cubic, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae, ,, which in this period must be treated as a fine art, though in recent centuries contemporary production has tended to be seen as decorative. The term "ars sacra" ("sacred arts") is sometimes used for medieval Christian art in metal, ivory, textiles and other high-value materials from this period, though this does not cover the even rarer survivals of secular works.

Modern understanding of the art of many cultures tends to be distorted by the modern privileging of fine art media over others, as well as the very different survival rates of works in different media. Works in metal, above all in precious metals, are liable to be "recycled" as soon as they fall from fashion, and were often used by owners as repositories of wealth, to be melted down when extra money was needed. Illuminated manuscripts have a much higher survival rate, especially in the hands of the church, as there was little value in the materials and they were easy to store.

The promotion of the fine arts over the decorative in European thought can largely be traced to the Renaissance, when Italian theorists such as Vasari Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian and architect, who is today famous for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing promoted artistic values, exemplified by the artists of the High Renaissance The High Renaissance, in the history of art, denotes the culmination of the art of the Italian Renaissance between 1450 and 1527. Because Pope Julius II patronized many artists during this time, the movement was centered in Rome; it had previously been centered in Florence, that placed little value on the cost of materials or the amount of skilled work required to produce a work, but instead valued artistic imagination and the individual touch of the hand of a supremely gifted master such as Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal, Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period or Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( pronunciation ), (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519), was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose, reviving to some extent the approach of antiquity. Most European art during the Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in had been produced under a very different set of values, where both expensive materials and virtuoso displays in difficult techniques had been highly valued. In China both approaches had co-existed for many centuries: ink and wash painting Ink and wash painting is an East Asian type of brush painting also known as wash painting or by its Japanese name sumi-e . Ink and wash painting is also known by its Chinese name shui-mo hua (水墨畫, Japanese suibokuga (水墨画?), Korean sumukhwa, Vietnamese tranh thuỷ mặc'). Only black ink — the same as used in East Asian calligraphy �, mostly of landscapes Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost, was to a large extent produced by and for the scholar-bureaucrats Scholar-bureaucrats or scholar-officials were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. These officials mostly came from the well-educated men known as the scholar-gentry (绅士 shēn-shì). These men had earned or "literati", and was intended as an expression of the artist's imagination above all, while other major fields of art, including the very important Chinese ceramics Chinese ceramic ware is an artform that has been developing since the dynastic periods. China is richly endowed with the raw materials needed for making ceramics. The first types of ceramics were made about 11,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese Ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built produced in effectively industrial conditions, were produced according to a completely different set of artistic values.

Some decorative arts

• Pottery Pottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery can also refer to the material of which the potteryware is made. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today
• Glassware This list of glassware includes drinking vessels , tableware, such as dishes, and flatware used to set a table for eating a meal, general glass items such as vases, and glasses used in the catering industry whether made of glass or plastics such as polystyrene and polycarbonate, including some stained glass The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works made from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings. Although traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also
• Furniture Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things. Storage furniture such as a nightstand often makes use of doors, drawers, shelves and locks to contain,
• Hardstone carving Hardstone carving is a general term in art history and archaeology for the carving for artistic purposes of semi-precious stones, also known as gemstones, such as jade, rock crystal , agate, onyx, jasper, serpentine or carnelian, and for an object made in this way. Normally the objects are small, and the category overlaps with both jewellery and, including pietra dura Pietra dura or pietre dure , called parchin kari in South Asia, is a term for the technique of using cut and fitted, highly-polished colored stones to create what images in stone. It is considered a decorative art. The stonework, after the work is assembled loosely, is glued stone-by-stone to a substrate after having previously been "sliced work
• metalwork Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewellery. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills, processes, and tools, especially by goldsmiths Goldsmiths, University of London, is a constituent college of the University of London. Based in New Cross, London, Goldsmiths specialises in the teaching and research of creative, cultural and cognitive disciplines. The institution was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. It
• jewellery Jewellery or jewelry (see American and British English spelling differences) is a form of personal adornment, manifesting itself as necklaces, rings, brooches, earrings and bracelets. Jewellery may be made from any material, usually gemstones, precious metals or shells. Factors affecting the choice of materials include cultural differences and the
• textile arts Textile arts are those arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects
• Some mosaics Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, normally roughly cubic, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae, ,, and all micromosaics Micromosaics are a special form of mosaic that uses unusually small mosaic pieces (tesserae) of glass, or in later Italian pieces an enamel-like material, to make small figurative images. Surviving ancient Roman mosaics include some very finely worked panels using very small tesserae, especially from Pompeii, but only from Byzantine art are there
• Wallpaper
• Fretwork

See also

• American craft
• Applied art
• Arts and crafts
• Faux painting
• History of decorative arts
• Ornament (architecture)
• Customised buses and trucks in Pakistan

References

• Fiell, Charlotte and Peter, eds. Decorative Art Yearbook (one for each decade of the 20th century). Translated. Bonn: Taschen, 2000.
• Fleming, John and Hugh Honour. Dictionary of the Decorative Arts. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.
• Frank, Isabelle. The Theory of Decorative Art: An Anthology of European and American Writings, 1750–1940. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
• Campbell, Gordon. The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Thornton, Peter. Authentic Decor: Domestic Interior, 1620–1920. London: Seven Dials, 2000.

External links

• Decorating with Art, Antiques and Collectibles
• Home Economics Archive: Tradition, Research, History (HEARTH) An e-book collection of over 1,000 books on home economics spanning 1850 to 1950, created by Cornell University's Mann Library. Includes several hundred e-books on decorative art and design, particularly that created within the home.
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Argentine Decorative Art Museum
• The Bard Graduate Center (BGC) for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture
• Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt Program in the History of Decorative Arts & Design
• Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution
• Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture - electronic resources
• Metropolitan Museum of Art American decorative arts collection
• National Gallery of Art decorative arts collection
• Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, Milan, Italy
• Museum of the City of New York Decorative Arts Collection
• Decorative Artists in Canada
• Winterthur Program in American Material Culture

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