Jewel casket

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is one of a small corpus of luxury ivory objects produced in Sri Lanka in the seventeenth century. Probably commissioned by a Dutch East India Company merchant operating in Sri Lanka, it would have been offered on the Amsterdam luxury market to grace a lady’s apartment as a container for pearls and jewels. Similar luxury goods are inventoried in European noble collections from the late seventeenth century.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art