Decorative arts

Decorative arts. Ornament made to be worn, and decoration applied to objects that have a use: beads and pendants, engraved and inlaid vessels, worked metal, patterned textiles, furniture and tableware treated as design rather than as equipment. The anchor is Bizmoune Cave near Essaouira in Morocco, where thirty-three perforated marine gastropod shells come from deposits dated by uranium-series on the overlying stalagmitic floor to at least 142,000 years ago — the earliest known personal ornament. Decoration applied to a useful object follows at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape, where engraved ostrich-eggshell water containers form a tradition of repeated motifs at about 60,000 years ago: ornament on a vessel, and a convention rather than a single gesture.

Boundaries. Decorative arts is the ornament itself. The changing conventions of dress are Fashion; the idiom in which any work is made is Style; a mark standing for something other than itself is Symbols; three-dimensional form made as its own object is Sculpture; and the traded article is carried on the Commodity axis.