Sugar bowl

Marc-Etienne Janety

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Janety appears to have been the first European silversmith to work in platinum, newly available to silversmiths in the 1780s. It had recently been discovered that arsenic lowered the melting point of platinum, allowing it to be cast and then worked. The new medium also had the advantage of not tarnishing. This sugar bowl appears to be the only extant work in platinum by Janety. The crispness of the details, seen in the relief of the satyr and nymph and in the various decorative motifs, reflects his technical mastery of the medium.

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