Band with Various Fantastic Creatures and Vegetal Patterns (1800s): Art, History and Details

Band with Various Fantastic Creatures and Vegetal Patterns (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The reversed and backward orientation of many of the squares in this band of lace suggests that this was not their original layout. They were most likely taken apart and later joined back together in a disoriented manner.

Object facts

• Title: Band with Various Fantastic Creatures and Vegetal Patterns
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Lace
• Technique: Bleached linen (est.): needle lace, filet/lacis (knotted ground and darned in two directions)
• Dimensions: Overall: 24.7 x 316.5 cm (9 3/4 x 124 5/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Lace
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1933.343

A detail from the museum

The square showing a man in midair above a bull-like creature is reminiscent of the Minoan "Bull Leaping" fresco at the Knossos palace complex.

Collection credit

Bequest of Louise Tifft Brown

Further reading listed by the museum

• Underhill, Gertrude. "Louise Tifft Brown Bequest of Lace." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 20, no. 10 (1933): 157-59.
• Simeon, Margaret. The History of Lace. London: Stainer and Bell, 1979.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.