Charger

Meissen Manufactory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This large dish and another acquired with it were most likely produced as part of an extensive dinner service, although the service has not yet been identified. Their ornithological decoration suggests a date of manufacture in the mid- to late 1740s. In 1745 the Meissen factory acquired the first volume of Eleazer Albin's "Natural History of Birds," and the decoration on a number of vases and other wares produced shortly thereafter was based on Albin's prints. The accuracy and specificity of the birds portrayed on these wares set them apart from the much less detailed and more generic birds on porcelain produced in the following decades. The skill of the Meissen painters is also reflected in the rendering of the insects on the molded basket work pattern executed in low relief on the rim.

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