Card table

Charles-Honoré Lannuier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The latest styles in European furniture arrived in colonial and Federal America by three principal means: pattern books of engraved furniture designs, imported high-style objects, and skilled immigrant craftsmen. This exquisite table, a nearly pure rendition of French Consulate (1799-1804) design, was made in New York by one of the most important of these immigrant craftsmen, Charles-Honoré Lannuier. Trained as a cabinetmaker in Paris in the tumultuous aftermath of the French Revolution, Lannuier came to New York City in 1803 and distinguished himself as the city's resident ébéniste de Paris until his untimely death at the age of forty in 1819.

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