Clothes brush (one of a pair)

Barnard Brothers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The building of railroads during the first half of the nineteenth century led to a tremendous increase in travel, which stimulated the demand for the sumptuous dressing cases retailed by Frederick Jenner and Fabian James Knewstub and other London firms. This luxury case (61.78.1–.50), with its pivoting compartments, secret storage areas, and myriad fittings "which quite exhaust the requisites for the road or the boudoir," certainly made travel as comfortable as it was cumbersome.

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