Pocket set of drawing instruments

Peter Dollond

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This étui contains tools for a draftsman, including a protractor, dividers, and an ivory rule. The maker of the instruments, John Dollond, was trained as a silk weaver, a trade he abandoned in 1752, when he began to collaborate with his son making optical instruments. From the 1760s on, such English luxury goods were available in Paris in magasins anglais.

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