Covered Vase

Faience Manufacturing Company

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Through its form and decoration, this vase, like many of the Faience Manufacturing Company's objects made after 1886, illustrates the Near and Far Eastern, as well as English, influence on late nineteenth-century American ceramics. Rising from a bulbous body, the long neck with domed cover recalls an Islamic minaret. Botanical motifs depicted on Japanese ceramics inspired the lavender and sepia wisteria enriched with raised gold paste that trails over the shoulder of the vase and down its sloping sides.

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