There is also a goodly show of art-furniture and decorative or ornamental accessories thereto in the handsome rooms of the Art Furnishers' Alliance. Less comprehensive than the preceding, the works and objects here shown, except the many examples of Oriental art, are mostly by English manufacturers, and present characteristics of design with which we have been made more or less familiar in recent years. There is, apparently, a frequent preference in the selection for the quaint and primitive, and for Anglicised Japanese and other Oriental forms and colours. The so-called Early English is clung to; decorative art is dissociated from Fine Art, and the influence of the historic Continental is scarcely perceptible. There are two or three comparatively new kinds of pottery, particularly that of Linthorpe. The shapes of this pottery are mostly derived from the East; it is richly glazed, and parti-coloured in generally low-toned hues. The objection is that its decorative function is limited; some of its hues would often be more appropriate as a background to the more cheerful, purer, and, therefore, more "precious" colours requisite as points or foci of decoration. A series of wall decorations is still more novel. In these considerable ingenuity is shown in getting good effect, with simple stencilled patterns and painted dados, from the tones of ordinary brown paper, sugar paper, soap paper, and other cheap materials; but that such decoration and materials is "likely to effect a revolution in the internal decorations of our homes" is hardly probable.
Source: The Illustrated London News, No.2258—Vol. LXXXI, Saturday, August 12, 1882, p.175
Decorative Arts:—
Part 1: Exhibitions of Decorative Art
Part 2: Decorative Art: Galleries
Part 4: Suffolk Street galleries