See more objects with the tag floral, animals, music, art deco, exoticism, tapestry, gouache.

Object Timeline

1918

  • Work on this object began.

1928

  • Work on this object ended.

1971

  • We acquired this object.

2015

2016

2017

2025

  • You found it!

Drawing, Textile Design: The Enchanted Isle of Beautiful Sounds

This is a Drawing. It is dated ca. 1923 and we acquired it in 1971. Its medium is brush and gouache, graphite on brown wove paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

Crisp’s richly colored painting is a study for one of a set of three tapestries meant to adorn the walls of a music room. The resulting tapestries, made of silk batik and measuring over eleven by nine feet in size, never made it into the client’s home because of financial issues. Crisp’s use of color-saturated gouache and Persian elements evoke otherworldly luxury which would have been magnified by the scale of the tapestries.

It is credited Gift of Hon. Arthur Crisp.

  • Brooch
  • laminated, baked, and cut cellulose acetate.
  • Gift of Myra Cooper.
  • 2015-37-2

Our curators have highlighted 3 objects that are related to this one.

  • Hanging (USA)
  • wool embroidery on linen foundation.
  • Gift of Richard H. Frost.
  • 1996-112-1
  •

Its dimensions are

H x W: 35.2 × 45.4 cm (13 7/8 × 17 7/8 in.) H x W (Sheet): 36.2 × 47.6 cm (14 1/4 × 18 3/4 in.) H x W (Mat): 55.9 × 71.1 cm (22 × 28 in.)

It is signed

Signed, lower right: CRISP

It is inscribed

Inscribed in graphite, left margin: Friday 10 AM Thursday Crisp Mount .... [illegible]

Cite this object as

Drawing, Textile Design: The Enchanted Isle of Beautiful Sounds; France; brush and gouache, graphite on brown wove paper; H x W: 35.2 × 45.4 cm (13 7/8 × 17 7/8 in.) H x W (Sheet): 36.2 × 47.6 cm (14 1/4 × 18 3/4 in.) H x W (Mat): 55.9 × 71.1 cm (22 × 28 in.); Gift of Hon. Arthur Crisp; 1971-96-1

We have 1 media file that features Drawing, Textile Design: The Enchanted Isle of Beautiful Sounds.

"The Creeper," Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra (1926)

Arthur Crisp’s textile drawing The Enchanted Isle of Musical Sounds reminds me of early jazz in New York City in the 1920s—evocative, exotic, fresh, energizing, and at times mysterious. “The...

http://www.folkways.si.edu/kentucky-club-orchestra/the-creeper/jazz-ragtime/music/track/smithsonian

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18475707/ |title=Drawing, Textile Design: The Enchanted Isle of Beautiful Sounds |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=5 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>