History

The Faculty of Decoration was founded in 1988,

In order to understand the reason for the Faculty’s existence in the first place it is necessary to go back some time. In fact to the year 1894, in Manchester, at a convention of the National Association of Master Painters. Here a number of notable decorators of that time put forward proposals for the creation of an institute to elevate the art and craft of decoration and improve the status, training and qualifications of decorators. This met with so much approval throughout the land, including Scotland and Ireland, that an institute was actually formed in October of that year and on the 21st of January 1899 the Incorporated Institute of British Decorators was registered under the Companies Act 1862-1890. It is important to us to bear this Institute of British Decorators in mind. Its founders and members were all decorators of high repute.

The Institute of British Decorators flourished and for all of its life it maintained its objective of improving the training and qualification of the interior decorator.

Firstly by working with such bodies as the City and Guilds of London Institute and having a strong influence on the content of that Institutes examinations and later setting up an examination structure for entry into its own membership. At all times the emphasis was on quality and skill. It kept up with the times and in 1975 the name of the institute became the British Institute of Interior design.

The original objectives of the institute were still relevant and continued to be implemented.

In 1988, after much heated discussion, the British Institute of Interior Design was merged with the Chartered Society of Designers and so, after nearly one hundred years of working for the benefit of the interior decorator and the subsequent improvement in the internal environment, a professional identity for those whose work and qualification was in the field of decoration was lost.

It was at this stage that a number of former British Institute of Interior Design Fellows met to review a situation where the highly qualified and skilled interior decorator now had no professional representative body. It was at Huddersfield on the 15th of October 1988 that this meeting took place. The concern of the meeting over the loss of the interior decorators professional status was so overwhelming that it was unanimously decided there and then to form a new institute to remedy this situation. Work began straightaway in laying the foundations for the new professional institute. In drawing up the documents for incorporation it was felt appropriate to widen the scope of the institute by adopting the word ‘Decoration’ in the title, rather than decorator, so including all the decorative arts and being more meaningful in context.

In the meantime the Faculty of Decoration, as it was to be known, attracted the active support of a number of Past Presidents of the demised British Institute of Interior Design. All these people were eminent in the field of decoration, design and education and saw the formation of the Faculty of Decoration as a continuation of the objectives and ideals set out by those great decorators of the past who had founded the British Institute of Decorators.

The inaugural meeting of the Faculty of Decoration took place on 26th November 1988. After some ten months of hard work, finalising the constitution, the Faculty of Decoration was incorporated on the 22nd of August 1989. Since that time the Faculty has made steady progress in attaining its stated objectives and developing into a truly professional organisation.

Membership now includes Fellows in Australasia and Europe as well as in England, Scotland and Wales. The history of any organisation starts with its foundation. The foundation laid by the membership of the Faculty of Decoration is strong and this is due in no small part to their determination to ensure that craft skills are not lost and the status of the decorator is recognised through qualification and attainment.

Memorandum Of Association

�