Tea tray (Plateau)

The Muses Master

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The composition at the center of the tray shows Venus spanking her son, Cupid, with a spray of roses, illustrating the inscription below: Nul amour sans peine, nul rose sans epine (No love without grief, no rose without a thorn). Venus and Adonis and Venus and Cupid are depicted in vignettes enclosed by the elaborate Rococo frame. Faience tea trays were immune to the heat of the spirit lamp and to spills of hot water and milk. Relatively few ceramic tea trays have survived. They were often set into the recessed top of plain occasional tables.

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