Courts and Colonies: The William and Mary Style in Holland, England, and America

Reinier Baarsen, Phillip M. Johnston, Gervase Jackson-Stops and Elaine Evans Dee. Cooper-Hewitt Museum/Carnegie Museum of Art (Univ. of Washington, dist.), $29.95 * ISBN 0-295-96804-4 From the late 17th to the early 18th centuries, William and Mary of Britain exercised, in addition to political clout, what was to be a lasting esthetic judgment on architecture and design. Inheritors and reinterpreters of the stately French ``decorative idiom'' of Versailles, the monarchs made their influence felt in court circles first; merchant society absorbed it indirectly. This conscientious, illustrated catalogue, including four brief essays by art historians, surveys the hallmarks of the formal, highly ornamented William and Mary style in the Netherlands, England and the United States, embracing decorative glass, parquetry, furnishings, engravings, and busts and paintings of the period's namesakes. As such, the volume is intended for art and architecture specialists, not lay readers--for though the Dutch, American and British incarnations of the style may indeed speak a ``native language,'' it is not one that springs to modern lips without study. (June)