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Although sculpture and the decorative arts share common ground, they are rarely considered together. The innovative exhibition, which this publication accompanies, challenges the reason why sculpture is usually considered alone, in the gallery, and the decorative arts are considered as part of a period setting. It suggests that by breaking away from these conventional categories we can see how sculpture is also part of a spatial conversation, and how furniture and fittings can be appreciated as unique works.

With five original essays and forty complete catalogue entries, this publication both documents an exhibition and goes beyond it, opening our eyes to the fluidity of formal language in the 'long' eighteenth century, and to the ways in which objects can change according to whether they are seen together or apart, as mobile or fixed, as two- or three-dimensional, as ideal or as functional.

Published to accompany the exhibition Taking Shape: Finding sculpture in the decorative arts, at the Henry Moore Institute 2 October 2008 - 4 January 2009 and at The J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles 31 March - 5 July 2009.