Russell Staiff argues that heritage discourse and practice are tightly interwoven with the theoretical legacy of the visual arts, specifically citing the shared concerns of formalism, iconography, aesthetics and modernism (“Heritage and the Visual Arts” 2015). Yet craft, as a field of knowledge, is often subsumed under the visual arts, when in fact its materialities, functionality, concerns about skill and preoccupation with the local (whether understood as geographically or politically const...

Architectural historian John R. Stubbs suggests that architectural conservation is concerned with historic buildings and their sites as well as their associated accoutrements, such as furnishings and fittings. But what happens if the building itself is not seen as “historic” or even worthy of a heritage designation, much less conservation, while its site and furnishings are significant in aesthetic, cultural or social terms; in other words what happens when a building’s decorative arts tru...