Piece

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This roller-printed furnishing design was produced in at least three different single-color versions and one with multiple colors. The additional colors were added to the initial roller-printed design by block printing. The design relates to the "pillar" furnishing prints—patterns of fluted classical columns decorated with trailing vines and flowers—that enjoyed great popularity during the first third of the nineteenth century. The date of this piece is based in part on comparisons with window drapery styles that appeared in The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics in the years 1819 and 1820. The Repository of Arts was published in London by Rudolph Ackermann (1764–1834) between 1809 and 1828, and vividly documents the taste of the English Regency.

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