Water-pattern textile

Water-pattern textile

Associated Artists

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This abstracted water pattern seems to have been derived from a photolithograph in Thomas W. Cutler’s widely read pattern book A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design (1880). The plate illustrates fourteen different ways that Japanese artists represented water; one of them is matched almost exactly by the design of this fabric. Pattern books such as Cutler’s helped professional artists and amateurs alike become familiar with the Japanese design vocabulary.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.