Ivy textile

Associated Artists

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Candace Wheeler (1827-1923), who probably designed this textile, was a partner in Louis Tiffany’s short-lived interior decorating firm, "Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists, along with painter Samuel Colman and designer Lockwood de Forest. When the firm dissolved and Wheeler went on to create her own textile design company, she retained the name, "Associated Artists." Her work, like this fragment, often incorporated the letters AA. The ivy pattern was made using an offset roller-printing technique to create the illusion of multiple layers of leaves or of the ivy casting shadows on the surface behind it. The pattern was first printed in a pale green dye that makes the background layer of ivy; then the same printing roller was coated with a dark green dye and placed at a different starting point (“offset”), and the fabric was printed a second time. Using this simple technique Wheeler was able to influence the viewer’s perception of light and shadow—a concept fascinating to her and one that she experimented with further in some of her highly sophisticated silk designs.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art