Each holiday season, The Met Store presents a new star and snowflake ornament recalling two treasures in the Museum’s holdings. This year, we mined the collection of musical instruments for inspiration.
Selected for their sonic and aesthetic beauty as well as their social and technical significance, each instrument in this department serves not only as a document of musical history and performance but as an art object and ethnographic record. Of the approximately 5,000 instruments housed at The Met—spanning six continents plus the Pacific Islands across more than two millennia—our design team was taken with the exquisite rosettes on two stringed marvels made during the 18th century.
The 2023 Star Ornament adapts the rosette on a remarkable spruce, ebony, ivory, tortoiseshell, and mother-of-pearl archlute (ca. 1725) (shown in full above), a type of long-necked lute derived from the Florentine chitarrone ("large kithara").
Following its invention around 1585, various forms of long-necked lutes were subsequently developed. The Roman archlute, which appeared at the end of the 16th century, became a popular church instrument. By the mid-18th century, the archlute was an essential voice in orchestras.
This particular archlute in The Met collection, one of only 10 known examples of its kind, was made by David Tecchler (Austrian, 1666–1747), the most prominent Roman luthier of the early 18th century. Tecchler was mainly celebrated for his violins and cellos; this nearly six-foot-long instrument appears to be his only extant archlute.
Our 2023 Snowflake Ornament reinterprets the lavish rosette from a rosewood, spruce, walnut, bone, and mother-of-pearl mandola (1797) (shown above in full). This impressive piece was crafted in Milan by Giuseppe Presbler (German, active Italy, 1760–1801), who belonged to a family of lute and mandolin makers renowned for their skillfully decorated instruments.
Shop our 2023 Star and Snowflake ornaments—available individually and in sets, including a luxurious set in sterling silver—in-store and online, where you can explore our full collection of new and classic holiday designs, from ornaments to stationery and artful gifts for you and your loved ones.
