Sugar bowl with cover and tray 1777 - 1778

Curator: Oh, my stars, it’s all silver and frills! It looks like a confectioner's dream, shimmering and delicate like crystallized sugar. Editor: Indeed. We are looking at an ornate silver sugar bowl with a cover and tray, dating back to 1777-1778, crafted by Alexandre de Roussy the Younger. The Metropolitan Museum houses this dazzling example of late 18th century decorative art. Curator: Rococo, through and through, isn’t it? All those swirling lines and flourishes, like musical notes dancing across the surface. And look at that finial! It’s almost edible. Do you think they served real sugar from these? I'd love to serve sugar like that, feel like royalty every morning with my coffee. Editor: These sugar bowls were indeed functional, a vital part of elite social rituals around consuming imported goods like sugar, tea, and chocolate. The rococo style itself, with its extravagant ornamentation and emphasis on luxury, mirrored the aristocratic lifestyle. We can't forget how labor was extracted in the colonies in order for sugar production to even happen. So much excess comes from tremendous suffering. Curator: True. A dollop of sweetness built on bitterness, how very apt for sugar. But I also see a desire for beauty, even excess—a pure, unfiltered yearning to revel in gorgeous forms. Editor: But that beauty is constructed through systems of power and exploitation. Think about who got to enjoy the privilege of using such objects and who was excluded, whose labor was extracted. These objects become a locus for examining social disparities. The style’s artificiality, its emphasis on display… Curator: Alright, alright, before my head swirls as much as the bowl! Can't it simply be beautiful, and complicated? A vessel holding both sugar and histories, sweetness and sorrow, isn't that precisely what makes art captivating? Editor: Perhaps. It's precisely this tension, the interplay of aesthetics and social dynamics, that makes these objects worthy of our sustained examination. To let it "simply be beautiful" risks erasure. Curator: Precisely, a story told in sugar and silver. Editor: Indeed. And it's our job to consider the entirety of the tale.