Tobacco pipe with case
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The deformed, roselike base of a roebuck antler was mounted in silver to form this pipe's bowl. Remarkable is the use of the Y-shaped prong finial that teasingly evokes smoke coming out of the perforated silver lid. The arched silver tube decorated with applied antler was inspired by an oriental hookah. The bowl's exotic appearance resembles the ornamental Chinese scholars' rocks and the flamboyant rock formations found in Chinese gardens, both widely admired in the West. The silver rocaille mounts echo and complement the antler deformations, thus exemplifying the interplay of art and nature. In eighteenth- century Europe the hunting of stags was a strongly guarded, aristocratic privilege. Therefore this sublime oddity was most likely made for a princely curiosity cabinet (Kunstkammer), a room where such objects could be handled and studied from every angle. Tobacco was considered to have aphrodisiac powers, and pulverized stag horn was thought to enhance strength. These attributes—together with the shell shape of the bowl's silver bottom, which refers to Venus, the goddess of love—could offer opportunities for initiating provocative conversations. The pipe is a Rococo document par excellence, both for its taste of the bizarre and for the mounting of highly treasured natural substances with precious metal.
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.