Edging

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum's great lace collection was started when the Museum became the first among American museums to organize a permanent collection of lace with the acceptance of the McCallum Collection in 1879 and the bequests of Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Robert L. Stuart, Mrs. Augustus Cleveland, and Mrs. A. W. Winters shortly thereafter. In 1893 a loan collection of antique laces shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was assembled by a committee of New York women headed by Catharine Augusta Newbold. About 1900 Miss Newbold arranged and labeled an exhibition of laces and linenworks lent to the Metropolitan Museum by Mrs. James Boorman Johnstone and the Misses Johnstone. "Her scholarly knowledge of lace technique enabled the Museum for the first time to offer a comprehensive display of lace illustrating its historical development," wrote Miss Frances Morris, then curator of the textile department. Miss Newbold's name occurs again in connection with a group of

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