Traveling set in leather case

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is amazing that eight implements could be compressed into this leather case. Though similar in its ingredients to German traveling sets, this Hungarian version also includes a type of cutlery rest in the form of a rod raised on legs that would have helped protect a tablecloth or precious table surface. It is also remarkable that function, and not ostentatious display, governed the design of each implement (see István Heller. Ungarische und siebenbürgische Goldschmiedearbeiten: Vom Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 2000, p. 134, no. 49, who points out the rareness of early examples. The type developed into a fashion of mostly bourgeois circles by the progressing nineteenth and twentieth century). It is also remarkable that each implement of the present set is designed to obey its utilitarian service instead of making a social statement. [Wolfram Koeppe 2015]

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