Britisk campaign furniture.(antiques)(Brief Article)

Every so often an article published in this magazine becomes the foundation for a book or an exhibition. This is the case on both counts for Nicholas A. Brawer, whose two-part article about British campaign furniture appeared in our June and September 2000 issues. His book on the subject was published by Harry N. Abrams this spring, and this summer he is the guest curator of an exhibition on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, through September 30. There are approximately one hundred objects on view in Britains Portable Empire: Campaign Furniture of the Georgian, Victorian, and Ed ward ian Periods. They are representative of what officers, gentlemen, and their families took with them when they went off to serve their king or queen in the far-flung reaches of the British Empire from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. In addition to the furniture, costumes, paintings, and decorative arts objects in the exhibition reveal that life in the British colonies closely imita ted life in London, as can be seen in arecreation of an officer's tent assembled for the exhibition.

British officers were most often members of the aristocracy, ...