Textile Design with Vases, Hats, Shovels, Cacti and Scrolling Garlands of Leaves

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 thin vertical dark blue stripes outlined with thin white lines and decorated with an undulating strip of small light pink rosettes organized in pairs separated by small stems with two leaves over a floral background of interlacing cream branches with leaves and roses with gray shades over a pink ground. This design presents a playful re-creation of "chintz" motifs that took place in the production of American textiles during the 1930s and 1940s, by including the traditionally used roses in an alternative way, in this case in the background of a floral striped pattern.