Side Chair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tall, stately, and covered in its original "Russia" leather, this high-back chair is a fine example of the fully developed William and Mary style. It is crowned with a characteristic Boston-school crest rail featuring C-scrolls and foliage. The calfskin leather is of the type made near Saint Petersburg in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Usually dyed red and embossed with a tiny lattice pattern, it was tanned and dressed with bark extracts and oils to make it supple and less subject to decay and insect infestation.

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