Textile Design with Vertical Scrolls of Pearls with Circles Separated by Vertical Undulating Garlands of Stylized 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 is made up of vertical scrolls of pearls with circles, separated by vertical undulating garlands of dark reddish-brown color with stylized leaves of light tan color over a light tan ground. The circles are colored with orange, purple and pink, and the pearls are colored with white. In the upper part of the drawing, the separating garlands have offsetting scrolls of leaves rendered with stipples of dark reddish-brown color and the background is also decorated with scattered stipples of dark reddish-brown color.

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