Textile Design with Bundles of Flowers and Leaves, Camels and a Checked Pattern
Robert Bryer American
Not on view
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 a grid outlined with thin white vertical and horizontal lines over a bluish-gray ground. The squares formed by the grid are decorated alternatingly with three blue vertical stripes and three dark blue horizontal stripes, the intersections adorned with small blue dots, a white camel with two tiny palm trees and a pyramid, and a bundle with two red roses, a yellow-and-orange flower and dark blue branches with leaves. This design presents a playful reinterpretation of traditional floral and "chintz" textile motifs, by presenting the traditional roses with other figurative exotic motifs, such as the camels, together with colorful checks, which was common in the production of American textiles during the 1930s and 1940s.