Editor's letter.(Editorial)

Although the theme this month is international, an annual issue for ANTIQUES, the perspective, quite naturally, is American. Like Henry James, who unwrapped the mystery of our national character by sending Christopher Newman, Lambert Strether, and Milly Theale abroad, we find ourselves here among foreign customs and objects that excite our uneasy American fascination with luxury.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I'm not surprised that it took an adventurous American, the collector Paul F. Walter, to appreciate what several decades and two cultures had overlooked--the extravagant splendors of Indian silver made for the nabobs during the British Raj between about 1858 and 1947. These elaborate punchbowls, tea services, and calling card cases arise from the rituals of colonial rule, but they celebrate something else--the way Indian silversmiths, in a stealthy assertion of artisanal and ethnic pride, improved upon British desires by creating intricate pieces wrought with indigenous motifs.

From India we go to Cleveland and another intrepid American, Sherman Lee, director of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1958 to 1983, who opened our eyes to Asia and, also, as Martin Filler explains, disrupted the parochial hierarchy of painting and sculpture by emphasizing the importance of the decorative arts. I'd not have suspected this, but am intrigued to learn that one of Filler's favorite pieces from Lee's tenure is the museum's ultra-luxurious rococo tureen and tray shown on page 124.

Lee's rich legacy lives on at the Cleveland Museum, where Stephen Harrison has organized an exhibition, Artistic Luxury: Faberge, Tiffany, Lalique, that addresses, among other things, the pleasures and contradictions in the lavish artistry of these late ...