Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental Frames

Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental Frames

Anonymous, Alsatian, 19th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rectangular sheet of paper with a textile design from a group, dated 1840, made in Mulhouse, Alsace which was an important nineteenth-century center for textile production in the Haut-Rhin region of France. The design is made of dark alternating vertical garlands of stiff branches decorated with pearls, surrounded by stylized branches of light tan color and bordered in tan color, and vertical strips of cartouches containing a small rosette flanked by stylized leaves in the center over a stylized bush of light tan color bordered in tan, over a dark reddish-brown base. The cartouche is made of twelve touching circles with pearls in the center, which are bordered by a looping line that surrounds the motif of the rosette and its flanks; the outside border of the cartouche is made of a scrolling garland outside the circles. One strip of stiff branches is rendered in black color and the pearls in white. One cartouche is rendered: the central rosette and stylized leaves are colored in black over a white background; the circles are of dark red color and the pearls black; and the bordering garlands are rendered in white with black borders; the outer garland contains, additionally, stippled black dots. Repeat patterns are left unfinished; pencil lines can be seen over the paper.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental FramesTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental FramesTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental FramesTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental FramesTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Stiff Branches and Rosettes with Flanks over Ornamental Frames

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.