Box

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This octagonal box has embossed moldings and is decorated with a charming chinoiserie scene. Such boxes served as souvenirs for Grand Tour tourists. The Scottish architect Robert Adam bought several "handsome snuff-boxes of tortoiseshell, studded with gold and with gold hinges" while he visited Rome in 1755.

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