Commode

Roger Vandercruse, called Lacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This small two-drawer sommode, made about 1755–60, appears to be an early work of Roger Vandercruse Lacroix. The two drawers are treated as a single decorative unit with continuous floral marquetry of endcut kingwood framed by scrolled and foliated mounts. Few pieces of furniture by Lacroix in the Louis XV style are known, and the present example belongs to no established group of his furniture. The mounts were used in varing combinations on commodes by a number of contemporary cabinetmakers—e.g., Charles Chevallier le jeune (maître before 1738–1771), Pierre Macret (1727–1796), Nicolas Petit (1732–1791), Adrien Faizelot Delorme (maître 1748, retired 1783), and Matthieu Criaerd (1689–1776)—and were probably commercially available in Paris in the 1750s. [Bill Rieder, 1984]

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