Sugar bowl

Pierre Benardié (or Berardier)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sugar came to be used in Europe with the newly imported beverages as tea, coffee, and chocolate. Sugar bowls were often fashioned as part of a silver service. Following English examples, French sugar bowls were shaped like an openwork basket with a blue glass liner during the 1770s and 1780s. Resting on four hoof feet, the bowl has two shaped handles and a knob in the shape of strawberries, most likely a reference to the sweetness of this summer fruit. Daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Catherine D. Wentworth (1865–1948) was an art student and painter who lived in France for thirty years. She became one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver and on her death in 1948 bequeathed part of her significant collection of silver, gold boxes, French furniture, and textiles to the Metropolitan Museum. The collection is particularly strong in domestic silver, as is illustrated by this sugar bowl.

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