Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by Pearls

Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by Pearls

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 composed of a dark reddish-brown base and alternating vertical garlands of stylized leaves of light tan color with stems of dark reddish-brown color, and undulating circles joined by a branch and surrounded by pearls over a spine of overlapping scales in light tan color shaded with stipples of dark reddish-brown color. The circles are of pink, orange, and purple color, with dark red border and a black shade; the pearls are colored in white, with black border and shade; the joining branch is colored in black and decorated with small white pearls.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by PearlsTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by PearlsTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by PearlsTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by PearlsTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Garland of Stylized Leaves and Undulating Circles Surrounded by Pearls

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.