Textile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental Motif

Textile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental Motif

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 horizontal garlands of branches of light tan color with tan offsets with abstract swirls of white color with black outlines and stipples and rosettes of white color flanked by six stylized leaves and framed by an interlaced ornamental motif of white color with branch offsets of tan color, joined by three parallel stripes of tan color. Two strips are fully rendered, the repetitions left unfinished.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental MotifTextile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental MotifTextile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental MotifTextile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental MotifTextile Design with Alternating Horizontal Garlands of Branches with Abstract Swirls and Rosettes Flanked by Stylized Leaves and Framed by an Interlaced Ornamental Motif

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.