Cruet Stand

Myer Myers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Quintessentially rococo is this frame to hold condiment containers for the dinner table. Sugar, pepper, and other spices would have been dispensed from silver casters and oil and vinegar from glass cruets. Most silver cruet stands used in America were imported from England and were equipped, as is this New York example, with a central openwork handle, shell feet, and an asymmetrical cartouche for an engraved armorial or script monogram.

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