Teakettle, lamp, and table

Simon Pantin I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Silver furniture—however improbable it may sound—was one of the glories of the French court, and a fashion emulated by ambitious English patrons. Most English examples were achieved by covering a wooden core with sheets of embossed silver, but the baroque stand for this faceted kettle is made of cast-silver components. It was made for George Bowes the year he married the fourteen-year-old Eleanor Verney, daughter and heir of an immensely wealthy father.

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