Toilet casket

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Known in French as a carré de toilette, this rectangular casket has canted corners and is richly decorated in so-called boulle marquetry of brass inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and tinted horn (contre partie). Containing ribbons, feathers, or other adornments, boxes like this played a role in the elaborate dressing ritual of the past and would have been placed on the dressing table. Similar caskets are depicted in Jean-Marc Nattier’s portrait Madame Marsollier and Her Daughter of 1749.

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