MFA Highlights: European Decorative Arts

$22.50 at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Author: Thomas Michie The world-renowned collection of European decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is full of sumptuous surprises. Some delicate and some divine, the objects range from an opulent automaton to a richly wrought crosier, and vary in scale from a salt cellar in the form of a crustacean to the fine wood paneling of an entire dining room. Their dates of manufacture span more than a thousand years—the earliest made shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire and the most recent in…