Europe 1400–1800

A decorated dish or vase can carry the marks of trade as well as the work of a maker. Room 46 brings together European objects from the Renaissance and later centuries, including ceramics, glass and precious metals. The Medici Valencian vase offers one example of a work whose name connects a place of making with a powerful collecting family. Across the room, luxury possessions share the story with more ordinary tablewares. Their different materials and decoration belonged to different settings and uses. Migration and religious change also shaped this period. Displays concerning early Jewish communities add particular lives to that wider history. As you compare objects for a table, a household or a ceremony, consider the people who made, traded and used them, as well as the later collectors who kept them.