Sugar bowl

Karl L. H. Müller

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Made as a prototype for a porcelain service exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, this tea set depicts troubling imagery on the finials of the teapot and sugar bowl in the form of heads of an Asian and a Black man. While designer Karl Muller’s intent was undoubtedly to present well-known iconography for tea and sugar—a goat is also depicted on the handle of the creamer—the representations reveal the pervasiveness of racist thought in 19th-century America. The Black head also underscores how the commodity of sugar was inextricably linked to the exploitation of enslaved labor, especially in the Atlantic World.

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