Beaker

Jean-Jacques Kirstein

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This silver-gilt beaker may have been a component of a dressing table set but equally could have been part of a set of cutlery and other dining implements to be used when the owner was traveling or hunting. Beakers of this type were a specialty of Strasbourg goldsmiths, the form having been developed there under German influence in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Made by Jean-Jacques Kirstein, one of the city’s leading silversmiths whose work was commissioned by noble and royal families throughout Europe, the floral motifs and curving feathers as well as the delicate waves on the foot, all point to the Rococo style. The city was particularly renowned for its unparalleled gilding. This beaker may originally had a cover, not uncommon for beakers made in Strasbourg.

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