Rag Rug
A Rag Rug is a floor covering made by weaving, hooking or plaiting strips of recycled fabric, a thrifty domestic craft tradition especially associated with 19th and early 20th-century rural households.
A Rag Rug is a floor covering made by weaving, hooking or plaiting strips of recycled fabric, a thrifty domestic craft tradition especially associated with 19th and early 20th-century rural households.
Raku is a Japanese hand-shaped, low-fired pottery technique developed for the tea ceremony in the 16th century, characterised by rustic, irregular glazing and a distinctive crackled or reduced-fire surface.
A Rat-Tail Spoon is an early style of silver spoon featuring a tapering ridge running down the back of the bowl into the stem, a form of reinforcement and decoration common in English silver spoons from the late 17th century.
Rattan is a flexible, durable palm material used for weaving furniture and baskets, especially popular for conservatory and garden furniture from the late 19th century, prized for its lightness and natural texture.
Redware is a common earthenware made from naturally red-firing clay, produced widely in Europe and colonial America for everyday domestic pottery, typically finished with a clear or coloured lead glaze.
A Refectory Table is a long, narrow dining table, originally used in monastic dining halls, typically supported on heavy turned or trestle legs, and revived as a popular English oak furniture form from the 16th century onward.
Regency Style is the English decorative style of the early 19th century (c.1795-1837), characterised by elegant, restrained forms influenced by classical Greek and Egyptian motifs, dark polished woods and refined brass and ormolu detailing.
A Regulator Clock is a precision clock, typically wall or longcase mounted, built to keep exceptionally accurate time, historically used by clockmakers and observatories as a master timepiece against which other clocks were set.
A Reliquary is a container designed to hold and display a religious relic, often elaborately crafted in precious metal, enamel or carved wood, of significant historical and religious art interest.
Rene Lalique (1860-1945) was a French glassmaker and jeweller whose innovative Art Nouveau and later Art Deco glass designs, from perfume bottles to car mascots, remain among the most celebrated in decorative glass history.
Repoussé is a metalworking technique in which decoration is hammered into relief from the reverse side of a sheet of metal, used since antiquity on silver, copper and brass to create raised, sculptural ornament.
A Revolving Bookcase is a freestanding bookcase mounted on a rotating base, typically with shelves on four sides, allowing access to a large book collection from a single seated position, popular from the Victorian era onward.
A Rib Vault is a ceiling structure formed from intersecting stone ribs supporting thinner vaulting panels between them, a defining feature of Gothic architecture that allowed for taller, more light-filled interiors.
A Ribbon-Back Chair is a chair with a splat carved to resemble intertwined, flowing ribbons, a decorative form strongly associated with Thomas Chippendale's Rococo designs of the mid-18th century.
A Ring Dial is a portable sundial in the form of a suspended ring, marked with hour scales and fitted with a sliding pinhole gnomon, used as a pocket timekeeping instrument from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Robert Thompson (1876-1955) was an English furniture maker from Kilburn, Yorkshire, famed for solid oak furniture bearing his signature carved mouse motif, founding a workshop and tradition that continues today.
Robert Adam (1728-1792) was a hugely influential Scottish architect and designer whose refined Neoclassical style shaped British interiors, furniture and decorative arts throughout the late 18th century.
Rock Crystal is naturally occurring clear quartz, historically carved into vessels, seals and chandelier drops, and lending its name to fine lead crystal glass developed to imitate its brilliance.
Rockingham Pottery was an English ceramics factory in Yorkshire, active from the late 18th to mid-19th century, known for its rich brown-glazed earthenware and, later, fine porcelain produced under royal patronage.
Rococo Revival is a 19th-century revival of 18th-century Rococo forms, particularly popular in Victorian and American furniture from the 1840s-1860s, marked by elaborate carved scrollwork and curvaceous silhouettes, notably in the work of John Belter.
Rococo Style is an 18th-century decorative style originating in France, characterised by asymmetrical curves, naturalistic motifs such as shells and flowers, and a light, playful ornamental quality, seen at its height in Louis XV furniture.
A Roll-Top Desk is a writing desk fitted with a flexible tambour cover that slides down to conceal the work surface and pigeonholes, a form patented in the 19th century and popular in offices and studies into the 20th century.
Romanesque Revival is a 19th-century architectural style drawing on medieval Romanesque forms, characterised by round arches, heavy masonry and squat columns, used particularly for civic and ecclesiastical buildings.
A Rosette is a circular, stylised flower motif used decoratively in architecture, furniture carving and metalwork mounts, a recurring classical ornament from antiquity through the Neoclassical revival.
A Rosewater Dish is a shallow decorative silver basin, historically used alongside a matching ewer for washing hands at table before the widespread use of cutlery, later retained as a ceremonial or decorative silver form.
Rosewood is a dense, richly figured tropical hardwood ranging from deep reddish-brown to near black, prized since the 18th century for fine furniture, veneers and musical instruments, and now protected under international trade restrictions.
A Rotunda is a round building or room, typically domed, a classical architectural form frequently used for grand entrance halls and garden pavilions in Georgian and Neoclassical country houses.
Rouen Faience is French tin-glazed earthenware produced in Rouen from the 17th century, notable for its lambrequin-style lacy blue decoration, among the most important early French ceramic centres.
A Roundel is a small circular panel or decorative element, used in stained glass, furniture inlay and architectural ornament, often containing a painted, carved or heraldic design.
Royal Crown Derby is an English porcelain manufacturer tracing its origins to the 1750s, celebrated for richly gilded Imari-pattern tableware and fine bone china, and holder of a royal warrant since the 18th century.
Royal Doulton is an English ceramics manufacturer founded in 1815, known for stoneware, character jugs, figurines and fine bone china tableware, and one of the most widely collected English pottery names of the 20th century.
Royal Worcester is England's oldest continuously operating porcelain manufacturer, founded in 1751, celebrated for fine hand-painted botanical and landscape decoration and elaborate blush ivory wares of the Victorian era.
Ruby Glass is deep red glass coloured with gold or copper oxide, a technique perfected in 17th-century Bohemia and widely used through the 19th century for cut and engraved decorative glassware.
Rush Matting is floor covering woven from dried rush fibres, historically used in English homes since the medieval period for its insulating and hygienic qualities, and revived in Arts and Crafts interiors.
A Rush-Seat Chair is a chair with a woven seat made from dried rush fibres, a durable, breathable and traditional country furniture technique used since the medieval period and still valued in vernacular and Arts and Crafts furniture.
Rustication is a masonry technique in which stone blocks are cut with deeply recessed joints and a roughened or textured face, used on building facades to convey strength and grandeur, particularly in Renaissance and Georgian architecture.
