This volume is one of several that examines the National Gallery of Art's distinguished collection of decorative arts. (The second volume will be published in 1996.) The group treated here is composed primarily of works acquired from the Widener Collection, and amplified by holdings acquired from the Kress family. Included are more than eighty Medieval, Renaissance, and later historic objects in a wide variety of media, encompassing metalwork, stained glass, enamels, ceramics, and jewels. Among the highlights are a Limoges reliquary chasse, a Mosan lion aquamanile, thirty-eight pieces in a remarkable cohesive group of Italian maiolica, three of the very rare pottery objects known as 'Saint-Porchaire', and, the centerpiece of the collection, the Suger chalice, an ancient sardonyx cup to which the Abbot Suger added a bejewelled golden setting in the twelfth century. Like other volumes in the Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art Collections,Western Decorative Arts includes a thoroughly researched entry for each object, together with an artist biography, up-to-date bibliography, and a technical analysis.

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A study of the condition, subject, design, manufacture, ownership, and exhibitions for each tapestry or set of tapestries in the Museum's medieval tapestry collection. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art.