“Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass"

“Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass” "The Garden,” Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Floral motifs long have been a mainstay of textile design. By the early 15th century, as expanded trade routes connected the world in ways never before experienced, patterning burgeoned into a hothouse of new and exotic species. Design, art, science, and trade followed the same paths, mingling to yield innovations on many fronts. Botanists exulted in a new wealth of cultivated plant varieties whose forms were documented in prints, many of which served as inspiration for textile
pattern design.

Made in Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Persia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the works in this gallery reveal not only the importance and versatility of flowers in design language, but also a network of design communication that remains important to this day.

Spanning 1500 BCE to now, the RISD Museum’s extensive costume and textiles holdings include more than 26,000 objects. The displays in this gallery are curated to encourage the study and creative interpretation of a broad range of objects by juxtaposing different cultures, time periods, and media.