Book cover with two borders with floral patterns
19th century
Medium
Relief print (wood or metal)
Dimensions
Sheet: 9 15/16 × 16 7/16 in. (25.2 × 41.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of D. Lorraine Yerkes, 1961
Accession Number
61.651.37
Art Historical Context
This exquisite 19th-century relief depicts a book cover adorned with two elaborate floral borders, showcasing the anonymous artist's mastery of decorative design. Measuring 9 15/16 × 16 7/16 inches (25.2 × 41.8 cm), it captures the ornate aesthetic popular during the Victorian era, when floral motifs symbolized beauty, nature, and prosperity in everyday objects like books. Crafted via relief printing—likely from wood or metal blocks—the technique involves carving away non-image areas, leaving raised surfaces inked and pressed onto paper. This method, widely used in the 1800s for its affordabi...
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...