unknown - Design for a Woven or Embroidered Textile - 1825–1850 - T-Shirt

This is a corner border design of white scrollwork, heart and fan motifs, and wave bands set on a bold crimson field, made as a working design for woven or embroidered textiles between 1825 and 1850.

Visual Elements & Composition

Crimson red fills most of the composition, with cream white motifs standing out sharply against it. The layout is an L-shaped border: a vertical strip holds stacked panels, each framed and carrying a single motif. A scrolled cartouche sits at the top, followed by an upright heart shape with radiating lines and a fan of small strokes, then another scrolled cartouche. A horizontal strip along the base repeats curling scrolls and a circular rosette of radiating petals. The outer edge is finished with a band of pale sage and a dark maroon border carrying a continuous white wave pattern. Faint pencilled guidelines show through the paper in the upper section, and the left part of the red field is left unfinished.

Meaning & Symbolism

Scrolls, hearts and radiating fans were common ornamental units in decorative schemes of the period. Their repetition gives the design a steady, ordered rhythm, and each framed panel reads as a self-contained unit that can be repeated along a strip. The sheet belongs to the mid-nineteenth-century tradition of border and edging design, when repeating panels like these were prepared for weaving or needlework. Its catalogue dating places it between 1825 and 1850, reflecting the period's taste for bold colour and clearly bounded ornament. The original artwork is catalogued by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Made for the Body of a Tee

A border is built to run along an edge, and this one reads best across the chest and along the hem, where its vertical and horizontal strips can be seen as they were intended to be seen: as a framed run of repeating panels. The white wave band at the outer edge gives the wearer a clean finish, the same way it finishes the original sheet.