Plate painted with scattered European flower sprays from a Chelsea dessert service c.1755 belonging to Mr & Mrs Rackett, the parents of Thomas Rackett
The range of decorative and applied arts includes Dorset pottery, ceramics, glassware and metalwork made in Dorset or by Dorset craftsmen. There is engraved glasswork by Laurence Whistler. An important Coalbrookdale mantelpiece by Alfred Stevens shows the quality of his award winning industrial designs in the mid-nineteenth century. The collection of clocks, watches and barometers are of Dorset makers or manufacturers. Vernacular furniture and collections of musical instruments have distinctive Dorset associations. There is a small collection of ceramics with fascinating connections to the county. This includes a French faience soup tureen found washed ashore on Chesil Beach from a shipwreck at the end of the eighteenth century - totally intact. Remarkably several miles down the coast the lid was subsequently discovered in one piece.