Textile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating Pearls

Textile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating 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 undulating ribbons of light tan color framed by garlands of stylized leaves and with a strip of stipples of dark reddish-brown color with pearls and dots running along the center of the ribbon, and with offsetting branches with stylized leaves rendered with stipples of dark reddish-brown color, separated by undulating strips of alternating pearls of the size of those in the garlands and smaller ones. The larger pearls are colored alternatingly with orange, purple, and green, and outlined with red; the smaller pearls are colored with white. The leaves framing the ribbon are of white color, and the dots running through the middle are of light tan color. The background is of light tan color with stipples of dark reddish-brown color.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Textile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating PearlsTextile Design with Vertical Undulating Ribbons Framed by Garlands of Stylized Leaves and with Pearls and Dots Running Along the Middle and with Offsetting Branches with Stylized Leaves Separated by Undulating Strips of Alternating 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.