Tilt-top tea table

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Types of furniture associated with social interactions—especially the serving and drinking of tea—were indispensable components of fashionable parlors during the second half of the eighteenth century. Tilt-top tea tables, featuring a single pillar supported by three legs, could be placed against a wall for storage when their tops were tilted to a vertical position.

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