Jug

Sebald Beham

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This stoneware was produced on speculation for a middle-market clientele. Though handmade, its decoration was quick work, pressed on with reusable molds based on designs lifted from prints. Siegburg potters developed a reputation for interesting forms and the latest styles rendered in a distinctive gray-white glaze; higher end pieces (like a related Siegburg stoneware ewer, 17.190.2058) boasted silver rather than pewter mounts. They were able to reach a huge market by distributing their work via trading posts controlled by the Hanseatic League, a powerful federation of merchant guilds and their market towns that included Lübeck, Cologne, London, Bruges, and later Antwerp and, to the north, Riga and Tallinn. [Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

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