Wax Fruit Centerpiece
Not on view
This sumptuous wax fruit centerpiece – a still-life painting in the round – epitomizes the mid-nineteenth century fondness for ornate naturalism and painstaking detail. This lady’s craft, which involved making plaster casts of real fruit and then using the molds to re-create the fruit in wax, was accomplished only with a great expenditure of time and effort. The unknown maker of this centerpiece has meticulously captured the transient beauty of the natural world.