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Through May 1, 2016, the Metropolitan Museum has on display Artistic Furniture of the Gilded Age, a selection of luxury furniture from the late 19th century. There isn’t much gilding: silver was the favored decorative metal accent at this period, with lots of inlaid wood and mother of pearl. I love the materials. I love what the creation of such furniture implies about rising prosperity in America. And I find it enormously relaxing to look at anything executed with this level of expertise.

The exhibition is tucked off to the side of the American Wing Courtyard, near the room from the Francis W. Little house that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (who would have hated every piece in the Gilded Age exhibition). Also near the exhibition is the MMA’s permanent collection of late-19th-c. furniture and decorative arts, including fabulous Tiffany glass pieces and my favorite wood-paneled entrance foyer – larger than many Manhattan apartments.

A couple of my favorite pieces from the exhibition:

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• Current exhibitions at the MMA are listed here.
• Mother of pearl, like ivory, tortoiseshell, and 35,000 other animals and plants, is on a list of contraband under the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Last month, British dealers bringing 18th- and 19th-c. decorative works to Miami for an antiques show had their shipment stopped by U.S. Customs agents. From the Antiques Trade Gazette: “The dealers and their shippers had not included proper mention of CITES-protected elements, such as tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, on the import paperwork in the belief that the quantities of material involved were negligible. However, after some pieces were found to be contraband under US law, the owners were contacted by the Fish and Wildlife Service and told that the offending elements had to be destroyed. An officer of the service met with each dealer for an hour to issue them with a warning and witness the destruction before releasing the other goods and permitting the dealers to continue to the fair. Maurice Dubiner, proprietor of Paul Bennett Antiques, told ATG his son Jonathan had found it necessary to smash the handles of two silver teapots and two coffee pots to remove ivory insulators and had surrendered the finials of two silver vegetable tureens.” The destruction ran to well over $100,000. … I can’t think of anything bad enough to say about this.
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