Four Seasons shawl

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A shawl was a required fashion accessory during much of the nineteenth century. In the early 1800s long, rectangular, stolelike examples, hand-woven in India with boteh (pine cone) or paisley patterned end panels, were coveted for use with Empire-style dresses. This style was followed by the square shawl and then, with the introduction of wider skirts, by "plaids"—a term used not to describe the pattern but to connote a very large and long shawl, usually ten feet by five feet. Stylistically, this shawl demonstrates both a "four seasons" layout—in which the ground color is different in each of the quadrants—and an organization a la pivot, indicating the manner in which the vegetation swirls around a central point. The design for the shawl is probably French, but it may have been purchased by a Scottish manufacturer and jacquard-woven in Paisley. [Alice Zrebiec, 1995]

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