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Hundreds of paintings, pieces of furniture and other artistic creations that span nearly 400 years of state history will become part of a permanent gallery at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh when the exhibit opens Saturday.

"Pleasing to the Eye: The Decorative Arts of North Carolina" contains items ranging in age from a childhood portrait painted in 1639 of King Charles II of England to a cup and saucer created in 1994 by a sixth-generation North Carolina potter.

"The collection started not so much as objects saved for decorative and ornamental value but for historical value," said Patricia Marshall, curator of furnishings and decorative arts at the museum. "It represents what people in North Carolina used."

The art is arranged by era so visitors get an idea of how people lived in a certain period, Marshall said. For example, the late 19th century was a time of overabundance, reflected in both the clothing and furnishings.

"The dresses women wore were highly ornamental, not only with bustles and trains but with the sewing that went into them, the draping, the decorative fringe and embroidery," Marshall said. "It really mirrored what a parlor would look like."

Such as the highly tufted upholstered pieces that reflected "how tightly those women were laced into the corsets," she said.

The collection represents not only how people lived but the history of North Carolina.

At the entrance to the gallery is the cast of the Antonio Canova statue of George Washington. Commissioned in 1825 and destroyed in a fire at 1831, the statue depicted the country's first president as a Roman emperor with body armor and sandals.

Details at www.ncmuseumofhistory.org.

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