Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Bookcase from the library of the Worsham-Rockefeller House
George A. Schastey & Co. American
George A. Schastey American, born Germany
Not on view
This bookcase is the only known element to survive from Arabella Worsham’s second-floor library, adjacent to the dressing room. Its exquisitely carved Renaissance-inspired ornament is typical of Schastey’s decorative scheme for the house, including the overlapping oak leaves on the upper rails and, at the corners, interlaced foliage emanating from an elongated baluster with attenuated turnings. The vases at the base are draped with a garland of bells, similar to designs found throughout the dressing room and undoubtedly a subtle reference to Arabella "Belle" Worsham. Schastey completed two subsequent libraries for Worsham and her husband, Collis P. Huntington: one in 1885 for their country home in the Bronx and another in the early 1890s for their grand mansion at Fifty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue.
