Textile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped Background

Textile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped 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 is made up of vertical strips of alternating lens-shapes and circles framed by pearls, separated by vertical strips of lozenges over a striped background of light tan color and dark reddish-brown stipples. The lens-shapes are colored with purple and have red and black outlines; the circles are colored with red and the pearls around them are colored with white. The lozenges are all outlined with red color, and are colored alternatingly with yellow and black.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped BackgroundTextile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped BackgroundTextile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped BackgroundTextile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped BackgroundTextile Design with Vertical Strips of Alternating Lens-Shapes and Circles Framed by Pearls Separated by Vertical Strips of Lozenges over a Striped Background

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.