Pair of vases

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the second half of the eighteenth-century, French designers sought ever rarer and more exotic materials for decorative objects. This pair of vases, of a granite called orbicular diorite found in both Corsica and the Ural mountains, may have been turned and polished either in Paris or St. Petersburg, where there was a luxury market for hard stone objects. They were then completed in Paris with gilt-bronze mounts including large handles in the form of rams' heads and finials with a knob of berries above acanthus leaves. Objects of this quality were much sought after by collectors and were sometimes especially commissioned by the Parisian dealers called "marchands merciers".

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