Cupid

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Image features wallpaper showing a seated female figure holding a cupid-like figure, amidst swags and multicolored floral decoration on a blue ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Balancing Nature, and Cupid, too
This is an arabesque wallpaper design from the late eighteenth century, containing two alternating views. The top view shows a woman, possibly Venus, within an arbor seated on a cross frame stool, playfully bouncing a putto, perhaps Cupid, on her foot. A tall urn sits behind her. A tree grows off to the left, towering...
Image shows a nursery wallpaper with images from different rhymes. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Rhyming around the Nursery
Gazing at this carefully organized menagerie surrounded by creatures of all sorts and softly, scrolling vines, this wallpaper entices our eyes to flit from scene to scene. In one section, we notice a spider looming next to a small girl and in the next a mischievous cat plays a fiddle. As this continues, we slowly...
Image features a rectangular snuffbox with hinged lid decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl fragments arranged to depict Cupid with small wings and holding a golden arrow, amid chased and inlaid gold scrollwork and grapevines. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
The Subtle and Stylish Sophistication of the Snuffbox
Small enough to hold in one’s palm and ornate enough to catch the eye of a passerby, this snuffbox is a combination of exquisite craftsmanship and subtle status symbol, as such containers often were in 18th-century Europe. The box is attributed to Johann Martin Heinrici, a Swiss artisan who worked at the famed Meissen porcelain...
Lovely Rituals
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Cooper Hewitt is dedicating select Object of the Day entries to works that celebrate women in our collection. We believe that this Italian Amorino Plate (also known as a coppa) dates from ca. 1600. The cupid (or putto) painted in the center of the plate, which is a shallow bowl,...
cupid in the clouds
Cupid in the Clouds
This lovely nineteenth-century panel is a testament to the Hewitt sisters’ affinity for fine French wallpapers, and perfect for those who wish everyday was St. Valentine’s Day. It was block printed on handmade paper c.1810, just a few decades before continuous roles of machine-made paper became the industry standard. The top edge of the paper...
Psyche’s Offering to Venus
Cooper Hewitt has a full set of the Loves of Psyche scenic wallpaper first produced in 1816. The museum’s edition was printed in the early twentieth century using the original woodblocks. This scenic paper is unique on two fronts: it is the only scenic not designed to be continuous, and it is the only scenic...
Square with greenish-blue ground having white decoration consisting of a kneeling woman wearing conical hat, long robe, watering a plant in classical vase at left, from which a cherub rises.
Watering Cupid
This pâte-sur-pâte glazed porcelain plaque, made by Mintons Ltd. in about 1909, reflects the humor and creativity of its designer, Marc Louis Emanuel Solon (1835-1913). Pâte-sur-pâte is a complex, time-consuming technique, which requires the designer to apply successive thin layers of liquid clay onto a tinted clay body in order to create a design. The...
Image of a man and a woman in a rustic background
The Original Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet’s story is known across the world, but what about the tale that serves as the foundation for Shakespeare’s work? Ovid’s Metamorphosis tells the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe; like Romeo and Juliet, these two were young lovers forbidden to wed because of a long-standing rivalry between their families. Their love grew through...