Panel for a skirt or petticoat

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With their finely scaled designs delicately executed in silk against vermiculated linen grounds, these panels were intended to be adapted into a dress skirt or possibly a petticoat. The floating elements of their chinoiserie motifs, however, speak as much to contemporary monumental wall tapestries as they do to the mania for decorating furniture with varnished cutouts in imitation of Asian lacquer work.

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