Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Repeat Patterns

Screen-printed cotton and linen
for couturier Paul Poiret, by Atelier Martine

1912
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Printed cotton
ca. 1875-1925
England
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Silk satin damask (monogram and rooster-heads)
ca. 1900
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Jacquard-woven silk (magnolia blossoms)
ca. 1900
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Silk satin
ca. 1840
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

THE ENEMY

My youth was nothing but a lowering storm
occasionally lanced by sudden suns;
torrential rains have done their work so well
that no fruit ripens in my garden now.

Already the autumn of ideas has come,
and I must dig and rake and dig again
if I am to reclaim the flooded soil
collapsing into holes the size of graves.

I dream of new flowers, but who can tell
if this eroded swamp of mine affords
the mystic nourishment on which they thrive . . .

Time consumes existence pain by pain,
and the hidden enemy that gnaws our heart
feeds on the blood we lose, and flourishes!

– from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (1857), translated by Richard Howard (1982)

Roller-printed cotton
ca. 1840
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Roller-printed cotton
ca. 1830
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Printed cotton, designed by Hippolyte Le Bas for Oberkampf & Cie.
ca. 1816-18
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Block-printed cotton
ca. 1700-1800
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Block-printed wallpaper (morning glories)
ca. 1795-1810
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Leather wall-covering, stamped, painted, and silvered
ca. 1725
Holland
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Linen and cotton twill
ca. 1600-1700
France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Silk-embroidered purse, with metal frame
ca. 1600-1700
England
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Silk appliqué with embroidery on silk velvet 
ca. 1600-1700
Europe
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Border design with pigments on paper (foliage and shells)
undated
Europe
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum