Textile Design with a Black-And-White Tribal Pattern with Semi-Abstract Glitched Bird Heads and Pyramids

Vertical panel with a textile design that is part of a group of 266 textile designs by the American artist Robert Bryer, possibly made for United Designing Co., since most of the designs carry a stamp of the "United Designing Co. / WOrth 4 - 8975". Some of them also contain a stamp in the verso of the "Original Designing Company, Inc."

The collection contains a great variety of designs, from the more traditional floral and stripe patterns, to thematic designs based on various travel destinations, with palm trees and other holiday attributes. Especially interesting among these are patterns inspired by textiles and paintings of Native American tribes, including the Inca, Navajo, Aztec and Maya. The patterns are composed of semi-abstract figures distributed across the design in a regular or, in some cases, a more casual fashion. The spontaneity of designs and the use of floral and animal motifs suggest they were created for printed textiles in the forties.

This textile design is made up of white frames with glitched semi-abstract motifs, scattered over a black ground. Some of the motifs inside the frames can be distinguished as bird heads and are colored with black over a white background, and some can be interpreted as pyramids with flag motifs of white color (achieved by leaving the motif unrendered on the sheet of paper) over a black glitched background. The tribal-inspired motifs in the design correspond to the rural revival of the American 'decorator' style that permeated textile designs starting in the second half of the 1930s and throughout the 1940s, many times inspired on indigenous and Native American design motifs.