Beaker and saucer

Miotti Family Workshop

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The island of Murano supplied Venice’s wealthy households and visitors on the Grand Tour with elegant glass objects for domestic use. Since the mid-fifteenth century, Murano manufacturers had specialized in making cristallo—a clear, colorless glass that resembles rock crystal—using a secret recipe that was coveted by courts throughout Europe. By the eighteenth century, competing glass centers in England and Bohemia, as well as changing consumer tastes, encouraged the development of new techniques in Venice. Glassmakers imitated fashionable materials such as lace, precious stones, and porcelain.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art