253 articles
Abomey appliqué
Abomey appliqué is a court textile art of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, in which colorful cut-cotton figures sewn onto dark grounds record the emblems, battles, and proverbs of Fon kings.
Achaemenid rhyton
An Achaemenid rhyton (ریتون هخامنشی) is a ceremonial drinking horn of the Persian Achaemenid empire, ca. 700–330 BCE, combining a horn-shaped vessel with an animal protome and a spout.
Afro-Brazilian religious art
Afro-Brazilian religious art spans sacred objects made for Candomblé and Umbanda rituals and works by artists like Rubem Valentim who translate the religions' symbols into fine art.
Albarello
An albarello is a ceramic storage jar with a concave waist, best known as the apothecary drug jar of the Islamic world and Renaissance Italy.
Alhambra Vase
The Alhambra Vase is a type of monumental luxury ceramic vase made in the Nasrid kingdom of Granada between the late 13th and 15th centuries.
Animal carpet
An animal carpet is a knotted-pile Persian carpet filled with animals in combat or hunting scenes, produced in Safavid Iran in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Antioch Chalice
The Antioch Chalice is a two-part Byzantine silver vessel of about 500–550 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibited in 1933 as the Holy Grail.
Aoki Mokubei
Aoki Mokubei (青木木米, 1767–1833) was a Japanese potter and literati painter of late Edo-period Kyoto whose porcelain revived Kyoto ware and, from 1807, Kutani ware in Kanazawa.
Ardabil Carpet
The Ardabil Carpet is a large knotted-pile Persian carpet dated by its inscription to 1539-40, made under Iran's Safavid dynasty and held in London's Victoria and Albert Museum since 1893.
Ardagh Chalice
The Ardagh Chalice is an 8th-century silver two-handled chalice found in 1868 in a hoard near Ardagh, County Limerick, Ireland, and now held by the National Museum of Ireland.
Arnold Krog
Arnold Krog was a Danish architect and painter who, as artistic director of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain factory from 1885 to 1916, created the blue underglaze painting style.
Art Nouveau glass
Art Nouveau glass is art glass produced in the Art Nouveau style of roughly 1890 to 1914, with its leading center in Nancy, France, under Émile Gallé.
Art Smith (jeweler)
Art Smith (Arthur George Smith) was an American modernist studio jeweler who worked in Greenwich Village from 1946 to 1979, creating large, biomorphic jewelry in brass, copper, and silver.
Asafo flags
Asafo flags (Fante: frankaa, plural mfrankaa) are appliquéd and embroidered ceremonial flags of the Fante asafo military companies of coastal Ghana, often depicting Akan proverbs.
Aubrey Vanderbilt Cecil
Aubrey Vanderbilt Cecil (Aubrey Lea Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil Baliles), great-great-granddaughter of George and Edith Vanderbilt, is an Asheville jewelry designer and founder of Avermore, a Biltmore-inspired fine jewelry brand.
Aubusson tapestry
Aubusson tapestry is a hand-woven textile art produced since the 15th century in Aubusson and Felletin in central France, known for large decorative wall hangings.
Aztec turquoise mosaic
Aztec turquoise mosaic is a Late Postclassic Mesoamerican decorative technique, dated 1400-1521, in which turquoise tiles were glued onto carved wood to make masks, shields, sacrificial knives, and pectorals.
Azulejo
An azulejo is a glazed ceramic tile used as a decorative covering of walls, floors, and façades, identified with Portugal, where it has been applied for five centuries.
Bactrian Gold
The Bactrian Gold is a hoard of roughly 20,000 gold objects excavated in 1978 from six nomadic burials at Tillya Tepe near Sheberghan, Afghanistan, dating to the first centuries BCE and CE.
Baptistery of Saint Louis
The Baptistère de Saint Louis is a brass basin inlaid with silver and gold, made in Mamluk Egypt or Syria around 1325 to 1340 and now in the Louvre.
Bencharong
Bencharong (เบญจรงค์, "five colors") is polychrome overglaze-enamel porcelain made in China to Thai specifications, mainly for the Siamese royal court and nobility from the Ayutthaya period through the 19th century.
Bi (jade)
Bi (璧) is a flat, circular Chinese jade disk with a small central hole, one of the earliest Chinese jade forms, buried with high-status individuals and later symbolizing Heaven.
Bizarre ware
Bizarre ware is a range of brightly colored, hand-painted English earthenware created by ceramic designer Clarice Cliff and produced from 1927 at the Newport Pottery in Burslem, Staffordshire.
Bobrinsky Bucket
The Bobrinsky Bucket is a cast bronze vessel inlaid with silver and copper, made in Herat in 1163, now in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
Boteh
Boteh (بته), also transliterated buta, is a Persian decorative motif shaped like a curved teardrop or leaf, used for centuries on carpets, shawls, and textiles.
Boucheron
Boucheron is a French high jewelry house founded in Paris in 1858 by Frédéric Boucheron, known for the clasp-free Question Mark necklace and owned by Kering.
Byzantine cloisonné enamel
Byzantine cloisonné enamel is the technique of decorating gold objects with colored glass fused into wire cells, perfected by Byzantine workshops from the 6th to the 12th century.
Byzantine textiles
Byzantine textiles are the woven fabrics of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, produced from the 4th century onward in linen, wool, and silk, including imperial purple silks.
Carved lacquer
Carved lacquer (tihong) is a Chinese technique of carving through many layers of lacquer to create raised designs, developed as a distinct art by the twelfth century.
Chalice of Abbot Suger
The Chalice of Abbot Suger is a sardonyx cup set in gilded silver, made for Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis before 1149 and now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.