Commode

John Mayhew

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The gilt-bronze rams have been attributed to Matthew Boulton, the one English manufacturer of decorative hardware to escape the anonymity of his colleagues, who lacked guild records to perpetuate their names. Boulton, with his partner John Fothergill, was responsible for an assembly-line production, 1768–1782, covering categories from buttons to vases, on a scale so comprehensive that Josiah Wedgwood deemed him "the most complete manufacturer in England of metal."

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