Book cover with circular designs and ornamental diagonal pattern
19th century
Medium
Relief print (wood or metal)
Dimensions
Sheet: 8 7/16 × 13 13/16 in. (21.4 × 35.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1940
Accession Number
40.21.111
Art Historical Context
This exquisite 19th-century book design, created anonymously as a relief print from wood or metal, showcases circular motifs interwoven with an ornamental diagonal pattern. Measuring 8 7/16 × 13 13/16 inches, it exemplifies the era's fascination with decorative symmetry and geometric elegance, likely intended to adorn the front of a bound volume. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, it was acquired through the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund in 0, preserving a snapshot of Victorian-era craftsmanship. Relief printing, a technique where the raised surface of a ca...
About the Artist
Anonymous
In the vast tapestry of art history, "Anonymous" stands not as a singular individual but as a collective designation for countless unidentified creators whose works have endured across millennia. These artists, spanning prehistoric cave painters to medieval illuminators and folk craftsmen, produced the foundational layers of human visual culture. Prior to the Renaissance, when individual fame emer...