The Decorative Arts Deconstructed.(Review)

Denis Diderot did it first in his magisterial Encyclopedie in which, as this worthy successor states, "the clear beam of the Enlightenment was shone on the gloom of the medieval workshop, dispelling many of the mysteries that surrounded the crafts." The plates from the earlier work are used frequently as illustrations in this dictionary of materials and techniques in the decorative arts. As Lucy Trench, the chief editor of this book, writes: "Much of the 18th-century technology that Diderot depicts has continued to this day in the hands of specialist craftsmen, while the clarity, elegance and precision of his plates are unsurpassed by any modem photograph or computer drawing."

Diderot lamented the difficulty of coaxing skillful but tongue-tied artisans to part with their secrets. Fortunately modern conservators are more articulate, and six of them are among the ten contributors to this dictionary. The others are three scientists and an art historian. The bias of the book is toward the decorative arts of the West, but Eastern materials such as lacquer and jade are not neglected. One of the great shortcuts to this sort of nuts-and-bolts book is the longevity of techniques and the enduring similarity of tools over millennia. Thus the cabinetmakers of ancient Egypt and the artisans in Viscount Linley's shop in London would have no difficulty comparing notes, and glassblowers at their glory hole would be doing about the same thing in 50 B.C. as at Orrefors, Sweden, today.

The section devoted to brick notes that the origin of brickmaking is unknown but that sun-dried bricks were found in Neolithic buildings at Jericho, which is such a long pedigree that we need not search for the first brick Fire gilding of metal, while not as ancient as brickmaking, originated in China in the fourth century B.C. The technique spread to Rome in the second century A.D. and remained in use until the invention of electroplating in the nineteenth century, despite the toxicity of the mercury fumes burned off in the process. Nowadays if you must have mercury gilding, you will have to travel to Nepal and the FarEast.

The neutrality of phrasing that characterizes the best dictionaries ...