Electronic Resources for Art Research

Decorative Arts

Seattle Art Museum Decorative Arts
Selected images from the Seattle Art Museum’s decorative arts collection. View SAM’s Porcelain Room.

Decorative Arts and Material Culture
Digital library created by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It includes documents, resources, images and more.

Victoria and Albert Museum—Furniture
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London possesses collections of Victorian furniture, church furnishings and more. Its furniture collections include over 14,000 pieces from Britain, the rest of Europe and America that date back as far as the Middle Ages.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Collection
From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The collection includes furniture, textiles, metal and stained glass.

Frederick Parker Chair Collection
Images from the London Metropolitan University collection on display at Metropolitan Works. The collection is on a long-term loan to the university. This online catalogue of chairs is the first of many phases intended to make the entire Frederick Parker Collection available to the masses.

Gardiner Museum
Explore the Toronto museum's collection of over 3,000 ceramic pieces by geography or by searching for a specific item. Includes both contemporary and historical works.

Porcelain

British

North Staffordshire Pottery Trade Marks
Using the alphabetical list or the search engine provided, you can search for initials, marks, crests or other symbols that trademarked the pottery created in the North Staffordshire area. The entry for each mark includes a date and description to help in identification.

Bowles Collection of 18th-Century British and French Porcelain
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco house the Bowles Collection. Of the 220 pieces in the collection, 202 have been digitized. You can explore these objects with zoom capabilities by using ImageBase.

The Wedgwood Museum
Looks at the themes in Josiah Wedgwood’s pottery and explores his work. The online collection offers 77 pieces for viewing. Also includes a substantial bibliography of works on Wedgwood, his business and his family.

French

French Porcelain for English Palaces
An eGallery exhibit of Sèvres French porcelain from the Royal Collection. Housed in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, this collection was primarily amassed by George IV between 1783 and 1830. The works are broken into categories including vases, tableware and furniture.

State Hermitage Museum
A search of the Russian museum’s collection of ceramics and porcelain from France returns more than 500 works of art. Each digitized image can be seen at full size, with two different screen resolutions, and the zoom feature allows you to more closely inspect the details of each image.

Italian

Italian Porcelain in the 18th Century (MET—Heilbrunn Timeline)
Slideshow presentation on 18th-century Italian porcelain, which includes a history and images of works. Other related information is available through related timelines, thematic essays, maps and index terms.

Italian Renaissance Ceramics at the National Gallery of Art
An online tour of Italian Renaissance ceramics in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Each object is accompanied by information on the piece, the artist, provenance and more.