In addition to English ceramics, the Birmingham Museum of Art houses a small collection of continental European pottery and porcelain dating from the Renaissance through the late twentieth century. Comprised of Italian majolica and French faience as well as both hard- and soft-paste porcelain and contemporary Danish stoneware, highlights of the collection include twenty-seven exceptional porcelain figures modeled by Johann Joachim Kaendler for the Meissen porcelain manufactory in Germany, bequeathed to the Museum by Eugenia Woodward Hitt in 1991.