NEW YORK—Call it craft or call it art—the labels don’t mean much now that the lines separating craft, design and fine art are less defined. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current show, “One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movement, 1965–2005” (though September 3, 2007), offers a fresh look at the post–World War II development when artists became more directly involved with making their own works in metal, wood, fiber, ceramics, glass and jewelry.

Curator Jane Adlin has selected some 50 Irredeemably idiosyncratic works, remarkable for their freshness, humor and technical mastery from the Met’s own collection. One standout is a totally beguiling silk and metallic thread work by John Eric Riis called “Kiss the Prince.” The prince is only implied, as what you see is a platoon of tiny frogs, hand-woven in silk tapestry, applied to a leather background with some 30 pounds of freshwater pearls and corals beads couched into the surface of the leather.

The works in this show are compelling because of their uniqueness, whether a John Cederquist trompe l’oeil cabinet, a Bonnie Seeman’s “Coffee Pot and Tray”—which looks innocent enough at first but on second glance reveals rhubarb and cabbage leaves suggesting human tissue and bones—or Harold O’Connor’s dazzling iridescent bow-shaped brooch.