Dressing table

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Both this dressing table and its matching high chest (10.125.58) are remarkably well preserved, with their tortoiseshell backgrounds—created by streaking lampblack onto a vermillion ground. The painted decoration, which includes a fantastical dragon and winged swans pulling a chariot with a shell-shaped back, is noticeably different from that on the suite of japanned furniture owned by the Pickman family of Salem (40.37.1, .2, .4).

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