Decorative Arts Trust Prize for Excellence and Innovation Awarded to The Digital Porcelain Rooms Project

The Decorative Arts Trust Logo

Media, PA — The Decorative Arts Trust is thrilled to announce that the 2025 Prize for Excellence and Innovation will be awarded to The Digital Porcelain Rooms Project, a collaboration between the Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum and the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Fabbrica di Capodimonte, Porcelain room of Maria Amalia of Saxony, 1757–59, Naples. Painted porcelain and stucco. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Ministero della Cultura. Photo by Luciano Romano courtesy of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Ministero della Cultura.
Real Fabbrica di Capodimonte, Porcelain room of Maria Amalia of Saxony, 1757–59, Naples. Painted porcelain and stucco. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Ministero della Cultura. Photo by Luciano Romano courtesy of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Ministero della Cultura.


The goal of the porcelain rooms project is to reanimate and reinterpret two of the most important interiors in the canon of 18th-century decorative arts: the Salottino di Porcellana in Naples, Italy, and the Gabinete de Porcelana in Aranjuez, Spain. The project embraces an expansive definition of decorative arts, examining not only the design and materiality of porcelain interiors but also the labor, technologies, and global flows that made them possible.
Maria Amalia of Saxony’s 1757–59 Salottino di Porcellana was originally installed in the Royal Palace at Portici in Naples and is now housed at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. Designed in the so-called Chinese taste using local craftsmen, the Salottino was left unfinished when Maria Amalia departed for Spain in 1759 but was later completed with a Roman mosaic floor, likely sourced from nearby Herculaneum.


Charles III’s Gabinete de Porcelana was developed 1760–65 at the Palacio Real de Aranjuez near Toledo, Spain, reflecting his assertion of political authority through elaborate interior design.

Buen Retiro Porcelain Factory, Porcelain study of Charles III of Spain, 1760–65, Madrid. Painted soft-paste porcelain. Patrimonio Nacional de España. Photo by Patrimonio Nacional.
Buen Retiro Porcelain Factory, Porcelain study of Charles III of Spain, 1760–65, Madrid. Painted soft-paste porcelain. Patrimonio Nacional de España. Photo by Patrimonio Nacional.


The Digital Porcelain Rooms Project is a transnational, interdisciplinary effort that brings together curators, art historians, archaeologists, conservators, technologists, and cultural heritage leaders from leading museums, research institutes, and universities across Europe and the United States. The project involves the participation of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Centro MUSA Musei della Reggia di Portici, the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities at La Capraia, and the Palacio Real de Madrid.


The Decorative Arts Trust Prize for Excellence and Innovation, founded in 2020, funds outstanding projects that advance the public’s appreciation of decorative art, fine art, architecture, or landscape. The Prize is awarded to a nonprofit organization in the United States for a scholarly endeavor, such as museum exhibitions, conservation and preservation projects, and online databases. Past recipients include Drayton Hall; the Concord Museum, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive; and Craft in America. Nominations are accepted through June 30, annually. For more information about the Prize for Excellence and Innovation, visit decorativeartstrust.org/prize.

Related Posts