Designs for Embroidery with Motifs of Wreaths, Bundles and Garlands with Flowers and Leaves

Drawing with a variety of design motifs for embroidery typical from the 19th century, which saw a revival of styles, including the Calssicism of Greece and Rome, Renaissance styles, Rococo and Neoclassicism. These revivals were linked to the "collector mania" that took place especially after 1850, and coincided with the Romantic movement in literature that saw in the past an escape from modernity. Some of the most common design motifs that emerged from this renewed interest in antiquarianism were naturalistic and floral motifs, including thin garlands and bundles, vases, classical musical instruments, and ribbons.

This drawing presents a variety of floral design motifs, starting on the upper left side of the sheet with various wreaths with stylized leaves colored with shades of green and small stylized flowers or nuts, and ovals created with small pearls, adorned with thin garlands of roses and leaves, sometimes with bows, tassels, and orther motifs, that would have probably served as frames for other design motifs or monograms. Under them are other thin garlands with flowers and leaves, some of them with interlacing strands of pearls, and some with wheat ears or ribbon bows, mostly colored with pastel hues of green, yellow and pink. There is also a larger garland with an undulating green stem from which emerge pairs of shuttle-shaped leaves rendered with two shades of green, with two rosettes with blue and yellow petals and red pistils on the ends, and one rosette with pink and green petals and yellow pistils in the middle, and several flower buds for this type of rosette.

The right half of the sheet contains a variety of large bundles and garlands, with numbered labels, with stylized flowers and leaves, mostly rendered with pastel shades of turquoise, pink and blue, and shades of green, yellow and brown. One of them, labeled with number 2, also contains stylized exotic fruits made up of a heart shaped motif with a pattern of tiny lozenges surrounded by blue and white petals. Under these bundles is a horizontal garland, labeled with number 3, with stylized flowers colored with shades of green and brown, large stylized flowers with white and gray perals and pistils colored with green and red, and small exotic flowers with petals colored with shades of blue and pistils colored with yellow, green and red. A label between these numbered designs explains that they are meant to be embroidered with silk on black velvet ("vanno ricamati in seta sul veluto nero").

Under these are three smaller motifs, a wreath and a thin horizontal garland with peatls and thin branches with tiny leaves and rosettes, and in the middle an exotic bundle with what is probably some type of indigenous instrument, traversed by a lance, surrounded by colorful branches with exotic flowers and leaves, colored with pink, aquamarine, red, purple and yellow, and a large feather, possibly representing those of an exotic creature, cikired wutg sgades if yellow, green and pink.