Design for a Coffee Urn

Anonymous, French, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This work is part of a collection of drawings for furniture, clocks, candelabra, etc. for decoration of the Chateau de Laeken (outside Brussels in the area formerly called Schoonenberg, now the Belgian Royal Palace). The designs were sent to Albert, Duke of Saxe-Teschen and the Archduchess Marie Christine, governors of Belgium from 1780-1790, from artisans in Paris, Vienna, and England. See 65.547.18b for a hand-written estimate for a repair to the object

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art