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Decorative metalwork designed in the Art Deco style by Maurice Ascalon and manufactured by the Pal-Bell Company during the 1940s.

The decorative arts are a traditional term for a number of arts and crafts for the making of ornamental and functional works in a great range of materials including ceramic, wood, glass, metal, textiles and many others. The field includes ceramics, glassware, furniture, furnishings, interior design, but not usually architecture. The decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the "fine arts", namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale sculpture, 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 includes the decorative arts but also graphic design and other categories, such as industrial design, 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 instead.

[edit] Some decorative arts

Pottery
Glassware, including some stained glass
Furniture
Hardstone carving, including pietra dura work
metalwork, especially by goldsmiths
jewellery
textile arts
Some mosaics, and all micromosaics
Wallpaper

[edit] See also

[edit] 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.