Dressing table

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In early-nineteenth-century cabinetmaking parlance, this “lady’s dressing table” features a “plain arch in sweep front”—a more expensive elaboration on the basic, straight-front model with a single long drawer. According to the English furniture designer George Hepplewhite, the drawers of dressing tables were partitioned to accommodate “combs, powders, essences, pin-cushions, and other necessary equipage.”

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