Textile Design with Undulating Garlands With Leaves, Daisies and Scrolling Branches with Flower Buds

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 undulating garlands of dark blue leaves and large stylized open daisies with white petals and yellow pistils from which blue scrolling branches with flower buds emerge. In the spaces left empty by the undulating garland lie groups of square motifs colored with blue and outlined with thin white lines, which stand out over the light blue ground of the design. This design presents a playful reinterpretation of traditional floral and "chintz" textile motifs, by presenting flower motifs together with geometric motifs, which was common in the production of American textiles during the 1930s and 1940s.

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