For the Gothic revival there is no better source than Sir Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival (1928, reprinted 1970). J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream (1981), is a study of the life of a protagonist of the Gothic revival style in design. Joseph Downs, American Furniture (1952), is a standard work. George Savage, The Dictionary of Antiques (1970), discusses former objects of interior decoration and their style from the Renaissance onwards. Art Nouveau has been the subject of a number of books. Among the best are Mario Amaya, Art nouveau (1966); Marton Battersey, The World of Art Nouveau (1968); and Stephen Tschodi Madsen, Source of Art Nouveau (1956).
There are no works discussing Oriental interior decoration only, and information must, for the most part, be gleaned from books discussing specific types of objects, such as painting, porcelain, furniture, and bronze. By far the best source is Chinese Art, 4 vol. (1960–65), an international symposium by several well-known Orientalists that discusses almost everything of importance to the subject. A useful general survey is Leigh Ashton (ed.), Chinese Art, by several well-known authorities (1935), which summarizes in one volume the salient facts about works in many differing materials. For Japanese art, Marcus B. Huish, Japan and Its Art (1889), is an excellent general work, but few books that can be recommended for the present purpose have been published in English.
On Islāmic art, an excellent work is David Talbot Rice, Islamic Art (1965); a more detailed survey is Maurice S. Dimand, A Handbook of Muhammadan Art, 3rd ed. rev. (1958). A.U. Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, 14 vol. (1938–67), should be consulted for this aspect. Franz Boas, Primitive Art, new ed. (1955), discusses the principles behind the decoration of a wide variety of art of this kind, with special attention to the North Pacific Coast of North America. Eric Larrabee and Massimo Vignelli, Knoll Design (1981), is a history of modern commercial interior design.