Toilet box containing three smaller boxes

Toilet box containing three smaller boxes

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Containing a nest of smaller boxes, these pieces may have belonged to a luxurious dressing-table set similar to one advertised by the dealer Burnsall on July 21, 1764: "A most grand and capital Lot of . . . Chelsea Porcelain, containing a dressing Glass and three Drawers . . . with different Gold Instruments and Twelve Toilet Boxes to ditto, all of the rich Mazarine Blue and Gold." The deep blue ground color, known as Mazarine blue, combined with the lavish gold decoration, used at Chelsea as early as 1756, clearly was influenced by Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Toilet box containing three smaller boxesToilet box containing three smaller boxesToilet box containing three smaller boxesToilet box containing three smaller boxesToilet box containing three smaller boxes

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.