Album of Drawings in Color for Waistcoats
Jean François Bony
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Unbound album consisting of 35 folios with over 130 designs for embroidery, largely meant to be applied to waistcoats in the styles of Louis XV and XVI. In most cases, multiple designs have been pasted onto a single page. The designs are executed in gouache and watercolor, partially over a graphite underdrawing. The embroidery patterns are mostly floral in nature. Occasionally, birds and insects are added to the design as well. Influences from Asian textiles can be detected in the fantastical flowers and fruits, which are sometimes accompanied by other elements generally associated with the taste for so-called Chinoiseries. The first few pages of the album contain designs on a white (paper) ground. Inscriptions in pen and ink have been preserved on some of these designs. The latter part of the album is filled with designs made on varnished paper. These lack inscriptions. Here and there pages are left empty. Several of these empty pages show white chalk silhouettes (ghost impressions) of yet other patterns that are not preserved in the album. Two executed embroideries, one on velvet and one on silk, were also part of this album when it entered the museum collection. They are now kept separately (see: 27.73.36 and 27.73.37).
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.