"Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits"; Plate 14, 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. Two of them, presented in vertical stripes on the upper part of the sheet, consist of repetitions of fragments of circles, curved shapes, and rectangles, one colored with shades of green, white and gray, and the other colored with shades of pink and gray and with some white highlights. Another design, presented in a horizontal stripe between these two vertical stripes, also consists of a repetition of geometric shapes, mostly fragments of triangles and semi-circles, colored with two shades of green, white and gray. Below it is a design with a variety of circular shapes rendered with squares and circular stripes, sometimes also transversed by diagonal stripes; several squares and rectangles, as well as a triangle with a pattern of rows of lozenges, are also present in the design, colored with turquoise, black, silver and gold. Below this group of four designs is a larger rectangle containing the last design of the group, made up of fragments of circles, rectangles, triangles, and other shapes with curved edges, executed with cream, pink, and at least four shades of gray.

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