Textile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging Lines

Textile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging Lines

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 a checked background of light tan and dark reddish-brown color with zig-zagging lines rendered with dark reddish-brown stipples, and vertical stripes of rosettes of black color with five petals and pearls of white color that form the pistils.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging LinesTextile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging LinesTextile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging LinesTextile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging LinesTextile Design with Rosettes and Pearls over a Checked Background with Zig-Zagging Lines

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.