"Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits"; Plate 17, Six Abstract Design Motifs

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 six designs for textiles with abstract motifs. The first one consists of fragments of circles and shapes created by curved lines, colored with cream, silver, gray, red, black and two shades of purple, and small bright green squares. The second consists of diagonal stripes created by bluish-gray arches, gray and black squares and black triangles over a blue ground. The third contains a variety of overlapping squares and rectangles of different sizes, colored with silver and shades of purple and gray over a purple ground. The third design, possibly for a ribbon or a border, contains abstract motifs created with fragments of circles, rectangles and stripes, colored with green, bluish-gray, tan, yellow and black over a brown ground; the design is bordered on one side with a vertical black strip. The fourth design consists of diagonal stripes filled with fragments of squares and L shapes, colored with bluish-gray, black and shades of green, and rows of yellow bell-like shapes. The final design in this group, possibly for a ribbon or border, is made up of fragments of circles, triangles and squares, colored with black, gray, pink, gold and dark brown, framed on the sides by two vertical brown stripes.