Arts Publications

Decorative art takes centre stage at the Walker; this month sees the official opening of the Craft and Design Gallery, at the Walker, Liverpool, the museum's first dedicated space for decorative art. Robin Emmerson introduces a selection of the recent acquisitions that form highlights of the new display

Apollo, Oct, 2004 by Robin Emmerson

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Meat dish

Design attributed to George Bullock (1782/83-1818), c. 1810. Underglaze blue-printed earthenware, possibly made at the Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool, 38 x 50.6 cm.

Presented by H. Blairman & Sons Ltd and Giles Ellwood Ltd, 1995.

The design on this dish is attributed to the cabinet-maker and designer George Bullock, when working in Liverpool between 1804 and 1811. Other pieces of this service of distractive form and decoration are known. Bullock held an account at the Herculaneum Pottery, Toxteth, Liverpool. He is recorded as buying a small quantity of Herculaneum pottery for sale in his own showroom, but also had examples of his own work fired at the factory. The bold blue-printed design on this dish, with its wreath border, lotus flowers and scrolls, clearly echoes some of the elements which appear in his furniture designs.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Hall chair

Purchased with the help of the National Art Collections Fund, 2002.

This is one of a set of four chairs designed by Pugin for the hall of his own house. It is more likely that they were made for St Marie's Grange, near Salisbury, begun in 1835, than for the Grange, Ramsgate, begun in 1843. His design for the chairs survives in the collection of the family of his builder, George Myers. In painting the backs with his coat of arms, he follows the tradition of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century hall chairs. The form, however, combines that source with a medieval stool and a renaissance sgabello. The exposed tusked-tenon joint at the front is perhaps Pugin's earliest use of this feature, a hallmark of his mature furniture design. The chair demonstrates the principles that he applied as much to furniture as to architecture, as set out in his True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841): 'The two great rules for design are these: 1st, that there shall be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament shall consist of enrichment of the essential construction'.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Astronomical clock

by Thomas Barry (1756-c. 1820), clockmaker, and James Moorcroft (1759-1816), cabinetmaker, Ormskirk, Lancashire, 1787. Mahogany, brass and steel, 91 x 42 x 42 cm.

Purchased in with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Art Collections Fund, 2002.

An astronomical clock represented the summit of achievement for an eighteenth-century clockmaker, and very few British examples are known. This one has three dials on different faces. The first gives the time and the phases of the moon, and has shutters in the arch above showing the varying length of day and night. The second face gives the date in the form of a perpetual calendar, with automatic adjustments for leap years. Above it is a dial giving the movements of the principal stars. The third face shows the orbits of the moon and the six planets then known. The clock was acquired with an advertisement for its sale by raffle at Mr Forshaw's Hotel in Lord Street, Liverpool in about 1787. A hundred and fifty tickets were offered at a guinea each. Barry probably chose this method of sale as a publicity stunt, in order to forward his ambition to be recognised as a maker of exceptional ability.