Pillow cover

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Small pillows were favored by gentlewomen as book supports when reading and as ways to display an owner’s taste and dexterity with a sewing needle. Rich with glittering spangles and cleverly worked in multiple types of stitches, this pillow is a teeming mass of minutelyobserved vegetation. The pomegranate, a non-native species, was initially a popular motif in Tudor England as the heraldic badge of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

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