Conveners:
Evelyn Welch (University of Sussex) and Marta Ajmar (Victoria and Albert Museum)

This session has three main aims: first, to explore objects now classified as the 'decorative arts' in their original historical contexts; second, to explore how the distinction between the 'decorative' and 'fine' arts became institutionalised in this period; and third, to explore the ways in which current museum practice is informed by these factors.

• Evelyn Welch (University of Sussex): Defining the Decorative Arts. Giovanni Pontano's De splendore, 1495
• Marta Ajmar (Victoria and Albert Museum): Women as Mirrors: donne famose and Self Identification in the Renaissance Domestic Interior
• Luke Syson (British Museum): Holes: The Collecting and Display of Medals in Renaissance Italy
• François Quiviger (Warburg Institute): Skin Contact, Image and Thought in Renaissance Secular and Liturgical Utensils
• Christopher Poke (Freelance Researcher): Ducerceau, Zuccaro and the vasi...di terra da Urbino lavorati a grotesca
• Jerry Brittan (University of Sussex): Plotting and Projecting: the Place of Terrestial Globes in Early Modern Europe
• David Gaimster (British Museum): The Duality of a Commodity: German Stoneware as a Utilitarian and Social Medium
• Lisa Monnas (Freelance Researcher): Ring-Patterned: Silk Damasks of the Sixteenth Century with particular reference to Holbein's The Ambassadors
• Kay Sutton: Title to be defined