Side chair

Giles Grendey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The increase in trade between England and the Far East engendered a fascination for things Chinese in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This chair, though made in England, is decorated in imitation of Chinese lacquer, and the central splat bears an image of a mandarin with an umbrella. According to the original label still affixed to the chair, it was made by Giles Grendey of London, who "makes and sells all sorts of cabinet goods, tables, glasses, etc." The chair is one of some eighty such miscellaneous pieces that Grendey supplied on order to the duke of Infantado for his castle of Lazcano in Spain.

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