"Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits"; Plate 11, Five Abstract Design Motifs

Various artists/makers

Not on view

This book, titled "Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits" (Kaleidoscope: Abstract Ornaments), is bound on dark blue linen boards and contains a title page and 20 plates (numbered 1-20) presenting a total of 87 designs for textiles, in the style of Art Deco. Having its peak during the "Roaring Twenties" (second half of the 1920s) and the Depression years of the 1930s, the eclecticism of Art Deco was permeated by both traditional European design traditions and contemporary avant-garde. The designs presented in this book contain colorful, abstract motifs, which evoke, with their fragmented vocabulary, the dynamism of modern culture that was common of Art Deco.

This plate presents five designs for textiles with abstract motifs. The first three designs are located on the upper part of the sheet, two of them made with diagonal stripes and squares colored with red, burgundy and orange, over a light green background with small white shuttle shapes; the one on the left also has black vertical stripes and rectangles, and is framed by two vertical brown stripes to the sides; the one on the right has vertical orange and red stripes and is bordered by two vertical purple stripes. In the center of these two lies a pattern made up of vertical stripes colored with shades of green and brown, small squares colored with green, black and brown, green semi-circles, and stylized pine trees executed with black over white highlights. On the bottom are the two remaining designs: the one on the left contains blue and gray squares and horizontal stripes over a background made with stripes colored with two shades of pink and green; the one on the right contains horizontal and vertical pink rectangles with three black lines running through their center, and squares with alternating egg-shapes and what look like small abstract palace fronts, over a background of diagonal stripes colored with two shades of purple.

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