Page from Festons und Dekorative Gruppen

Unidentified photographer

1893

A collotype-printed page that pairs ornamental plant studies—lush flowering stems beside long, crinkled leaves—created as a visual model for decorators and pattern designers to reproduce and adapt.

What arrests you is the vertical split: a dense, soft-focus cascade of layered blossoms on the left contrasted with a spare, sculptural arrangement of ribbed, dried leaves on the right, rendered in a rich, velvety range of grays.

Dating from 1893, this image illustrates how photography and collotype reproduction furnished the decorative arts with ready-made motifs and textures, helping to disseminate and standardize ornament for designers, publishers, and manufacturers at the turn of the century.

Palette

Exhibitions

A History of the Modern Poster

1941

Forgotten Photographers

1951

Nineteenth-Century Photographs from the Arnold H. Crane Collection

1979

Twenty Lithographs: Graphic Art Processes

1941