Inkstand

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Despite the fact that ink corrodes pewter, inkstands and inkwells were often made of this metal. This round inkstand contains a removable semicircular inkpot covered by a hinged lid. The other half is divided in two and consists of a sander with a perforated top and a container with a separate lid intended for wafers. The sander would contain very fine sand, shaken onto writing paper to blot the excess ink and the wafers were used to seal finished letters. The three holes in the rim were intended to hold quill pens, usually made of a goose wing’s feather. The angel stamp struck underneath indicates that the highest quality of tin was used for this piece. The stamp is incomplete and only part of the tinsmith’s name is legible: M. WAL … possibly for Anna Maria Walgraven who was active in eighteenth-century Goes, thus far the only recorded Dutch tinsmith whose name starts with WAL.

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