Box (one of a pair) (part of a set)

John Parker

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These boxes were part of a toilet service sold by the leading London retailers Parker and Wakelin to John Heathcote, who, a few years earlier, had married the heiress Lydia Moyer. Parker and Wakelin’s accounts for the sale show that the service included eight such boxes, a pair of candlesticks, two "essence pots," a looking glass, a "jewells trunk," and a pair of octagonal pierced trays. The cost for gilding the service was more than £56—roughly equal to the annual wage of a successful artisan—and the entire bill came to more than £300. There was a further charge of £6 6s for a "red morocco leather case with a drawer & 2 cushions."

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