decorative arts
Small, useful objects that are less costly than the fine arts. Whether in adopting the past (Ruskin and Moris) or embracing industrialism (Henry Cole), both philosophies embraced the decorative arts. 2. In Egypt and the East most works of art were commissioned for temples, palaces, or royal tombs. Decorative arts for the pleasure of most of the populace were thinly spread, though there was some elegant furnishing in the Levant, and engraved seals or scarabs and similar trinkets were fairly common (plate facing p. 279). In Greece there was no palace society in our period, but there were many state or religious projects to occupy the artist. A very high proportion of what survives was designed for the use of a wide spectrum of society.