Textile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with Pearls

Textile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with Pearls

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 vertical rows of bunches of stylized flowers of red color with pearls as pistils and leaves of black color decorated with pearls with offsetting branches of tan color separated by undulating garlands of branches of light tan color splattered with pearls over a dark reddish-brown ground. The pearls are of white color. One bunch of flowers is fully rendered and two repeats, positioned at the right end of the sheet, are left unfinished, with some distinguishable traces of pencil.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Rows of Bunches of Stylized Flowers with Pearls as Pistils and Leaves of Decorated with Pearls with Offsetting Branches Separated by Undulating Garlands of Branches Splattered with Pearls

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.