Pair of gloves

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The rich brown leather of these gloves is unusual; most surviving gloves from the seventeenth century are lighter in color. However, the motifs embroidered on the gauntlets—pea pods and blossoms—were quite common during the period. Pea pods were often associated with romantic love. They are found on both household furnishings and other accessories of dress, such as a woman's jacket of about the same date in the Museum's collection (23.170.1).

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