Couple Drinking Chocolate

Johann Joachim Kändler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The popularity of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate in eighteenth-century Europe is reflected in the prominence with which these beverages are depicted in porcelain figural groups. On this example, a couple drinks hot chocolate, as indicated by the chocolate pot—recognizable by the small hole in the lid—on the table. It is similar to a full-scale Meissen chocolate pot in the Museum's collection (see 42.205.136a, b). They drink from tall handleless beakers, a form of cup used for chocolate and coffee.

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