Drop-front desk (secrétaire à abattant or secrétaire en cabinet)

Adam Weisweiler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This may have been the last piece that Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796), a dealer in luxury goods, delivered to Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) at the château de Versailles. A porcelain-mounted secretary was, in fact, among the treasured possessions the queen entrusted to Daguerre for safekeeping in October 1789, shortly after a mob invaded the palace and the royal family was forced to return to the château des Tuileries in Paris. Bouillat, one of the best flower painters at Sèvres, may well have painted the beautiful ribbon-tied bouquet on the central plaque. The blue pointillé border was probably the work of Madame Taillandier who, with her husband Vincent, specialized in this decoration. The factory's paper label, printed with the interlaced L's and inscribed with the price (336 lives), is pasted on the back of the rectangular plaque.

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