Blackwork Embroidery

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With deceptive simplicity, skilled English embroiderers worked the finest Flemish linen, called "lawne," with black silk. Here, the Tudor roses, pomegranates, and rose hips are filled in with at least ten different minute patterns, highlighted with stitched chains of gilded silver-wrapped silk floss, called "Gold of Venice." Blackwork embroidery decorated royal household linens as well as items of clothing like neckerchiefs sported by Henry VIII; a pair of sleeves owned by his third wife, Jane Seymour; and panels for Queen Elizabeth's kirtles, the bodices and skirts worn under her gowns.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art