"Americana Prints: Metropolis" Textile
This textile was produced as part of Stehli Silk's Americana Prints collection, which was manufactured from 1925 to 1927. The company commissioned designs that captured a distinctly modern America from artists, illustrators, and cartoonists. In the 1930s, Carpenter became best known as a graphic designer, particularly among readers of Fortune magazine, for which he designed several covers. Carpenter's dynamic, even somewhat dizzying abstract design for this silk is predicated on repetition of tight pattern, the basis of which may have been an aerial photograph of New York.
Artwork Details
- Title: "Americana Prints: Metropolis" Textile
- Designer: Frederick Valentine Carpenter (British, Bristol, England 1891–1952 Kent, England)
- Manufacturer: Stehli Silks Corporation (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1897–1953)
- Date: 1927 (Series III, released spring 1928)
- Medium: Printed silk
- Dimensions: 38 1/2 × 27 in. (97.8 × 68.6 cm)
- Classification: Textiles-Printed
- Credit Line: Gift of Stehli Silks Corporation, 1927
- Object Number: 27.243.5
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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