Narrator: If you were a British aristocrat in the 18th or 19th century, your art collections were designed to display your wealth, taste and superior education. And a sense that, with the growth of the British empire, the world was at your fingertips.

Collections often included paintings and antique sculptures purchased while traveling in Italy. Gemstones and minerals added an element of science. Made around 1800, this Italian table combines a little of each category. Using techniques dating back to antiquity, valuable hardstones are combined with extraordinary artisanship into a patterned mosaic, set into white marble. Curator Jeffrey Fraiman:

Fraiman: Though made over 200 years ago, there's something remarkably fresh and abstract about this work. Everything was carefully planned beforehand - the placement of every single stone, every single color, the symmetry, the visual effects of the rhythm of placement of the stones across the tabletop. 

Part of the delight of these tables would be learned connoisseurs looking at them and contemplating the different stones - where they came from, how precious, how rare they were. The stones here were sourced from all over the globe, including places like Egypt, Afghanistan, Greece, Germany, and parts of Italy itself.

Narrator: Behind the façade of splendor created by pieces like this, often lay ominous circumstances. A few years after it was made, this table was purchased by Lord Stewart, later Lord Londonderry, who became infamous for his cruel repression of the Irish people, especially during the Great Famine of the 1840s.