Wine cooler (one of a pair)

William Lukin I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These wine coolers in the French style were made for Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister. They furnished the dining room at Houghton Hall, the grand country house Walpole built for his famous collection of paintings, which was later sold to Catherine II of Russia. Coolers for individual bottles of wine were a novelty in England, and these reflected the fashionable taste and deep pockets of one of the most powerful men in the country.

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