Pomegranate textile

Associated Artists

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The pomegranate has a long history in Western art as a symbol of fertility because many seeds are contained in each fruit. It is especially common in fifteenth-century figured velvets of the Italian Renaissance, which feature patterns of pomegranates enclosed by sinuous stems and tendrils. These probably inspired Candace Wheeler (1827-1923) in the 1890s when she was searching for historical precedents. In the Library in the Woman’s Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, Wheeler employed a slightly modified version of this pattern—a heavy blue brocade rather than the damask seen here. The brocade was made into wide portieres and was also used to fill the fireplace opening of the room’s ornately carved mantelpiece.

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