Floral print with figures

Floral print with figures

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stimulated by earlier imports of Indian printed cottons, by the second half of the nineteenth century French printed textiles became the most popular and affordable figurative fabrics for both dress and furnishings, surpassing silk in national production. This trend occurred despite strident restrictions, demanded by silk weavers, prohibiting domestic trade and use of printed cottons throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Reflecting developments in the printing industry, by the 1770s engraved copperplates started to replace simpler woodblocks, allowing for finely nuanced and beautifully detailed designs in furnishing fabrics like this one. This printed cotton was displayed in European Textiles and Costume Figures, on view at the School of Industrial Arts (visible at right in the photograph of 1935). [Elizabeth Cleland, 2020]

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.