Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Stripes of Lozenges with Pearls in the Vertices and Abstract Organic Honeycomb Structures with Branch Offshoots

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 up of alternating vertical strips of lozenges adorned with three pearls on each vertex over a light tan ground with stipples of dark reddish-brown color, and an abstract pattern of an organic honeycomb structure with branch offshoots of light tan color over a dark reddish-brown base with offshoots. The lozenges are of purple and orange color and have an outline of dark red color. The pearls are of white color with outlines of black color and some containing a black dot in the center.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art