Textile Design with Rosettes with Pearls as Pistils Grouped Together to Form Stylized Flowers over an Abstract Honeycomb Pattern in the 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 design consists of groups of four rosettes of light tan color with outlines of red color and pearls of white color as pistils over a background of an abstract honeycomb pattern rendered with stipples of dark reddish-brown color over a light tan base. The rosettes have the form of stylized petals, so that the groups of four rosettes look like larger stylized flowers.

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