Desk and Bookcase

Desk and Bookcase

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This H-shaped desk and bookcase may be the most unusual example of high-style furniture produced in the Federal period. Its design was inspired by the "Sister's Cylinder Bookcase," plate 38 in Thomas Sheraton's "Cabinet Dictionary" (London, 1803), but the maker substituted a rectangular fall-front desk between the two pedestals for Sheraton's cylindrical one. The decorative details are characteristic of fine Baltimore furniture. The double-line inlay spiraling down the turned legs can be found on at least one other piece of Baltimore furniture. The inscription refers to the date when Roswell Lyman Colt married Margaret Oliver, one of the four daughters of Robert Oliver, a millionaire merchant of Baltimore.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.