Scrapbook with Textile Designs on Colored Papers

Anonymous, French, 19th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Album with pasted in sheets of prepared colored paper onto which large botanical patterns have been applied in colored chalks. The colors of the paper vary from black, green, and blue to a deep purple and an orangey-red. The paper is prepared on one side only. Some of the designs are excuted in white chalk alone, while others make use of a bright color palette. Various patterns are drawn free-hand, but in certain cases a stencil may have been used to transfer (part of) a design. Most of the patterns are for allover schemes and are meant to be repeated. They range from straightforward natural representations of flowers to fantastical interpretations, some of which seem inspired by Chinoiserie patterns. A number of the sheets have been ripped out of the album. Two sheets of nature prints pasted on dyed blue paper, and another nature print on white paper are added at the back of the album. They are dated 1838 and 1839.

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