Embroidered whitework sampler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whitework samplers typically consist of a variety of stitches and lace-making techniques, all stitched in white thread. It is thought that samplers containing whitework, cutwork, drawnwork, and lace designs were stitched only after multi-colored band samplers were finished, as whitework techniques are more difficult. However, this theory is based on the very small number of documented seventeenth-century embroiderers who made multiple samplers. This sampler features geometric designs worked in reticella, which requires a stitcher to remove warp and weft threads from a piece of woven fabric, stabilize the void with buttonhole stitches and the create designs based on the remaining grid. While many surviving English samplers include white lace, cutwork, and drawnwork, relatively few examples of seventeenth-century lace have been attributed to English manufacture.

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