Vase

Tucker Factory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This vase is among the most ambitious ceramics made in this nation’s early republic era. Referencing sumptuous metal-mounted French porcelains of the period, it features elaborate gilded and polychrome enamel decoration. Each side is embellished with a different view of Philadelphia, taken from print sources. On one side, is Sedgely Park, designed by distinguished architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe and the country seat of Philadelphia merchant James Fisher. It is considered to be the earliest Gothic Revival house in America. On the opposite side is the view from Springland, the country estate on the Delaware River of the artist and landscape architect William Birch. Birch was the primary proponent of the English picturesque landscape, of which he considered his own Springland, the epitome. Thus, the views celebrate quite consciously a particular moment in this nation’s history—and —America’s most noted architect, and most noted landscape architect.

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