This volume is one of several that examine the National Gallery of Art's distinguished collection of decorative arts. 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 historicizing objects in a wide variety of media, encompassing metalwork, stained glass, enamels, ceramics, and jewels. Among the highlights are a Limoges reliquary chsse, a Mosan lion aquamanile, thirty-eight pieces in a cohesive group of Italian maiolica, three
of the very rare French 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.