Desk

Benjamin Burnham

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Inscribed: “This Desk was maid in the / year 1769 Buy Benjn Burnham, / that sarvfed his time in Felledlfey [Philadelphia]” this is the best documented and most ambitious of all Connecticut desks. Oddly enough, there is no apparent Philadelphia influence. Rather, the desk borrows motifs from Massachusetts (the inlaid compass stars and blocked front) and New York (the claw-and-ball feet in front and bracket feet in back).

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art