Textile Design with a Seamless Pattern of Lozenges and Shuttle Motifs That Form Abstractions of Naturalistic Motifs

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 seamless pattern of lozenges with shuttle-shaped motifs colored with different shades of blue and white over alternating shades of blue or an unrendered (white) ground. Some of the shuttle motifs are aligned to a line ending with a circle and look almost like leaves on a stem. Other are aligned side by side and seem abstractions of butterfiles or other types of bugs. The almost tribal nature of the design presents a trend that was common during the late 1930s and the 1940s in American textile design, called the American 'decorator' style, which borrowed inspiration from Native American cultures.

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