Plaque

James Callowhill

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Callowhill, renowned for his decorative raised-gold-paste technique, was an important decorator at the Worcester Royal Porcelain Works in England. He, his equally gifted brother Thomas, and his son Sidney emigrated to the United States in the 1880s and worked for important art potteries such as the Faience Manufacturing Company in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the Willets Manufacturing Company in Trenton, New Jersey, decorating wares in the Aesthetic style. Although James later moved to Boston to complete a major commission for Louis Prang’s lithographic firm, he continued to decorate ceramics. This plaque, painted in polychrome enamel with a bird on a branch among elaborate flowers and foliage and enriched with raised gold paste, is characteristic of Callowhill’s best work and may have been exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

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