Box

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Only a small minority of seventeenth-century boxes were decorated with applied ornament rather than carving. The decorative elements on this box are related to an unidentified school of craftsmanship that was active in northern Essex County during the 1680s and 1690s. The box bears the initials “SP”— presumably those of its first owner.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art