Potpourri bowl with cover

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fluted pumpkin-shaped jar, with a flattened lid, of gray-green celadon porcelain of the late Ming or early Qing period (seventeenth century), is richly mounted as a pot-pourri bowl with gilt bronze. A band of bronze, gilded, scrolled, pierced, and chased with foliate and shell forms, etc., separates the body from the cover. The center of the lid has been cut out, raised, and mounted with a deep circular border of gilt bronze chased with foliate scrolls and shell forms. This provides a podium for a group of shells and coral branches of gilt bronze forming a knop or handle to the cover. At each side of the body is a handle in the form of interlacing acanthus leaves and sprays of bulrushes of gilt bronze. The whole rests on a circular base of ribbed gilt bronze supported on four feet in the form of asymmetrical acanthus scrolls.

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