Textile Design with Trefoil Knots Framed by an Interlacing Honeycomb Pattern 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 alternating rows of trefoil knots framed by an interlacing honeycomb pattern of light tan color over a dark reddish-brown base decorated with pearls framed by circles, and with offsetting thorns rendered with stipples of dark reddish-brown color, over a background of light tan color with stipples of dark reddish-brown color. The knots are colored alternatingly with purple, orange, and green, and are outlined with red. The pearls are of white 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