Textile Design with Colorful Bundles of Flowers and Strips of Ribbon Bows

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 bundles of green branches with leaves and stylized flowers with white petals and red or dark blue pistils, yellow petals and white, red, green or dark blue pistils, and stylized red tulips over a blue ground with vertical stripes of pairs dark blue interlacing ribbons with ribbon bows. This design presents a playful reinterpretation of traditional floral and "chintz" textile motifs, by presenting colorful flower motifs together with figurative motifs like the ribbon bows, which was common in the production of American textiles during the 1930s and 1940s.