Museum of Applied Arts Cologne

This guide to the Museum of Applied Arts Cologne opens in the eighteenth century, when European courts built elaborate centerpieces out of sugar, temples and shepherdesses and battle scenes, only to have guests eat them at the end of the meal. It follows August the Strong's frustration with watching his showpieces disappear off the table, and his backing of the search in Meissen that produced European porcelain. Inside the museum's porcelain rooms, you'll see chief modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler's own work, including a Turkish couple posed beside a spice bowl and a pair of pugs that once stood in for sugar armies on aristocratic tables.