Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern Background

Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern Background

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 textile design is made of an abstract honeycomb pattern rendered with stipples of dark reddish-brown color over a light tan base, over which alternating vertical strips of aboeba-shaped figures and verical garlands with rosettes and pearls stand out. The amoeba figures are outlined with dots of light tan color and rendered with a smaller honeycomb pattern of dotted lines of light tan color over a dark reddish-brown base. The vertical garlands consist of alternating rosettes of yellow color with red outlines and four pearls of white color as pistils and smaller rosettes of purple color with red ourlines, joined together by a vertical strip of alternating pearls of white color, over a light tan ground with dark reddish-brown stipples.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern BackgroundTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern BackgroundTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern BackgroundTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern BackgroundTextile Design with Alternating Vertical Strips of Amoeba Figures and Vertical Garlands Decorated with Rosettes and Pearls Over a Honeycomb Pattern Background

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.