Textile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around Swirls

Textile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around Swirls

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 background consists of swirls rendered with stipples of light tan color over a dark reddish-brown base. Over the background, rosettes with five petals of light tan color, and with with five pearls forming the pistils, align forming hexagonal shapes around the swirls. The outline of the petals is of dark red color. The pearls are of white color and outlined in black. Five of the swirls contain a pearl, colored in white and outlined in black; repeat is left unfinished.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around SwirlsTextile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around SwirlsTextile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around SwirlsTextile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around SwirlsTextile Design with Rosettes Forming Hexagonal Shapes Around Swirls

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.