Materials and Techniques in the Decorative Arts: An Illustrated Dictionary (review)

Materials and Techniques in the Decorative Arts: An Illustrated Dictionary. Edited by Lucy Trench. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. ix+572. $60.

Materials and Techniques in the Decorative Arts arrived just as I read a column by a syndicated appraiser who dismissed as "cast ivorine" a "carved ivory" statuette submitted for evaluation. Consulting this handy new text led me from "Ivoride/ivorine/ivorite" to "Synthetic Ivory," where I learned that the plasticizers in the "Ivorine" manufactured in the 1920s and 1930s rendered it more versatile than celluloid (itself marketed as "Parkesine," "Xylonite," and "Ivoride" in the 1860s by what is now BXL Plastics Ltd.), and that Ivorine and its contemporaneous commercial rivals melted at high temperatures and dissolved in acetone, while today's epoxy and polyester synthetics are easily marked with a hot needle.

Organic substitutes--bone, hornbill, and vegetable ivory--are separately treated. "Ivory" itself surveys techniques (sawing, carving, drilling, scraping, turning) used to work the natural material, and references seven sources: elephant, mammoth, hippopotamus, narwhal, pig, sperm whale, walrus. The chain of referrals describes the physical traits of each type of tooth and tusk (e.g., hippopotamus and pig ivory are triangular in section; pig ivory is too dense to show visible grain, even under magnification); notes characteristics that affect handling (e.g., the hard enamel of hippopotamus ivory must be removed with dilute mineral acid); and offers biological asides (e.g., the left canine of the narwhal is some thirteen times longer than the right).

The extensive and far-ranging entries specific to ivory illustrate Lucy Trench's objective of covering materials from their "raw state through any processing or preparatory stage, through every possible craft stage, and finally to any surface finishing" (pp. vii-viii). The introduction notes certain restrictions, however: the "arts of the West" are emphasized; there is no attempt "to resolve the question of what constitutes a 'decorative' as opposed to a 'fine' art"; and the work is intended to "enhance our appreciation of an art object" by conveying the constraints, possibilities, and properties of each technique and material (p. vii).

Realities that might impede this appreciation rarely intrude. We are told, without further comment, that fire gilding is no longer undertaken in the West because it requires highly toxic mercury, but that it "is still used in Nepal and some other Asian countries" (p. 166). We are not told that most oriental carpets are produced by child labor; that the ivory trade continues to decimate African elephants; or that wild rhinos (whose keratinous growths are cut, carved, and polished into "highly prized" drinking cups [p. 414]) are being dehorned under field anesthesia in an effort to protect them from poachers.

Works written by four of the ten contributors--six conservators, three scientists, and an art historian--appear in a bibliography that privileges books and articles printed in Great Britain (an exception is Christine MacLeod's article on lead crystal glass, Technology and Culture 28 [1987]), and divides four hundred works into fifteen categories ranging in length from five ("Shell") to fifty-eight ("Stone and Related Materials"), and in time from 1100 ("General") to 2000 ("Textiles"). Most of the illustrations are black and white, but the small number of color plates is redeemed by their clarity and subject matter.

Materials and Techniques has more than a thousand entries, from "Abalone" to "Zwischengoldglas," competently cross-referenced by the editor. If, as was noted above, larger environmental issues are ignored, this lack can lead us to ponder why the search for beauty that makes us human should so frequently result in the inhumane. We can also ponder the infinitely lesser issue of nomenclature. Why is a text that provides both comprehensive and comprehensible coverage of "seven major core materials--textiles, metals, wood, ceramics, glass, stone and paper--as well as minor, but no less important, ones such as gemstones, ivory, lacquer, leather and shell" (pp...