Cabinet

Daniel Pabst

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This Modern Gothic cabinet superbly demonstrates the influence of British reform theory on American design in the late nineteenth century. In form and decoration, it is indebted to the British architect Bruce J. Talbert, whose book "Gothic Forms Applied to Furniture, Metal Work, and Decoration for Domestic Purposes" (Birmingham, 1867; Boston, 1873) was influential in this country. A kinship with the work of the Philadelphia architect Frank Furness is also evident in the overall form of the cabinet, the verticality and shingled "roof" of which somewhat resemble Furness's bank buildings of the 1870s. The reverse-painted ribbed-glass panels are of a type Furness began to use on buildings as architectural decoration in 1876. Their stylized floral motif recalls the geometric plant forms of Christopher Dresser, a leading English ornamentist of the period who visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and whose published designs were well known in this country. Daniel Pabst, a leading manufacturer of artistic furniture in Philadelphia, probably executed the cabinet. A related cabinet, now in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, is documented to Pabst.

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