Chess and tric-trac game board

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Game boards for playing chess, backgammon, and tric-trac (an early French variant of backgammon) served as diplomatic gifts and Kunstkammer display objects. Chess was integral to the instruction of potential rulers, as it helped develop the strategic thinking necessary on the battlefield. The game of goose, in which dice-throwing contestants raced to the center of the board while trying to avoid landing on certain symbols, was popular at the Medici court in Florence. This goose game board, designed after an Italian print and made by artisans in Gujarat for the European market, is the earliest known example in wood.

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