Tea Canister

Joseph Smith

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This earthenware tea canister is one of the earliest known dated examples of American pottery. Although decorated in the Pennsylvanian German decorative technique of sgraffito, it displays the potter's attempt at emulating the fashionable English, salt-glazed, stoneware tea caddies of the 1740s and 1750s. This redware caddy, however, is much larger than its English prototype and the naive design of the tea plant bears little resemblance to that of the English salt-glazed original.

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