Fabrique de Saint Ruf, Lyon, France - Design for an Embroidered or Woven Horizontal Border of the Fabrique de St. Ruf - 1815–1815 - T-Shirt

A horizontal floral spray in white on a warm ochre ground, built around one large chrysanthemum-like bloom flanked by two more, with a narrow band of small flowers running beneath.

Visual Elements & Composition

Ochre covers most of the field, with off-white linework and a touch of pale grey carrying the drawing. The central bloom is fully opened, its rounded, layered petals rendered in careful outline, and two more large blooms sit at the upper left and upper right. Smaller buds droop from the lower edge, while long, pointed leaves and feathery sprigs of tiny leaflets fan out between the flowers. Two white rules enclose a separate strip of five-petalled flowers and dots along the bottom, so the spray reads as a full composition above a border that can be repeated along an edge.

Meaning & Symbolism

The large, showy blooms reflect the taste for vigorous, naturalistic garden flowers in the years around the Empire. Pairing a main spray with a narrower repeated band was a common method in early nineteenth-century textile borders. The sheet comes from the Fabrique de Saint-Ruf, a silk workshop in Lyon and the principal centre of French silk design in this period. Its pattern sheets record both large floral compositions and the narrow borders that accompanied them. The catalogue dates this sheet to 1815, within the firm's production of sprays and borders in the years after 1810.

Wearing the Artwork

A horizontal design suits the front of a tee, where the spray sits across the chest and the bordered band can rest at the hem. The blooms and leaves are drawn with clear outline, so the pattern reads clearly from a distance, and the ochre field gives the shirt a warm, bold presence. Here an 1815 silk border becomes something you can wear every day.