The Ameya

Robert Frederick Blum

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Blum went to Japan in 1890 to illustrate a series of articles for Scribner’s Magazine and spent eighteen months there working on his own projects. His illustrated three-part article on his experiences appeared in Scribner’s in 1893 and included an image titled "The Ameya," on which he based this painting. He wrote of an illustration of another ameya, or candy blower: “Very interesting things they do certainly perform . . . using the candy like a glassblower his lump of molten glass, and producing results, if hardly as beautiful or durable, certainly as artistic and finished as regards workmanship.”

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