Toast rack

Christopher Dresser

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This toast rack, or letter rack, implicitly demonstrates Dresser's mission to create easily manufactured, functional, and novel designs. He was also interested in making affordable yet well-designed products for the growing consumer market. Constructed from a series of simply produced elements with exposed rivets, the toast/letter rack could be easily manufactured and its electroplated silver surface appealed to the middle-class pocketbook. Founded in 1855, the silversmith and electroplating firm of Hukin & Heath in Birmingham sought to improve business by hiring Christopher Dresser as art advisor around 1878. While the company's records were destroyed in the 1950s, Dresser's designs for Hukin & Heath survive as they were registered with the Patent Office. The company continued to manufacture Dresser's designs through the end of the century.

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