Length

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This French dress silk is a complex combination of textures and colors: silver and gold streamers and floral garlands meander across a background that features a brilliant green pattern of a small flowering vine. The textile employs six different metal-wrapped threads, plus twelve colors of silk. The layering of side-by-side streamers with floral sprays and garlands is typical of the 1760s, and the formula was used repeatedly with variations depicting ribbon, lace, or fur. Velvetlike chenille thread was sometimes used instead of metal thread. When made up into a woman's robe, the textile would have been further embellished with coordinating trim at the front opening of the gown and lace at the neck and sleeves. Trimmings and lace accessories added to the profusion of texture and the play of shiny and dull surfaces.

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