Textile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of Leaves

Textile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of Leaves

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 consists of alternating palmettes rendered with stipples of dark reddish-brown color over a tan base, decorated with eight pearls of white color, and flanked by a bundle of six branches with leaves of light tan color, all over a dark reddish-brown base. Only one full motif can be seen in the sheet, with only fragments of the repeats seen in the continuation of the pattern around this central palmette.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of LeavesTextile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of LeavesTextile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of LeavesTextile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of LeavesTextile Design with Alternating Palmettes Decorated with Pearls Flanked by Bundles of Leaves

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.