Pair of gravyboats

John Kentesber

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Modest though these sauceboats seem in both scale and form, their simplicity was planned to suggest the classical askos, a container for liquids. In antiquity the askos was made from a whole goatskin and had, naturally, a swelling, bulging shape and a drawnup neck, all in one piece. Already in antiquity the form was mimicked in metal. The sauceboats are thus examples of the arrival in silver of the Neoclassical taste, which not long before in England had captured the interest of architects and their clients. The feet and handles, however, are carryovers from the earlier Rococo style.

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