Accessory set

Daventree|John Held Jr.

ca. 1935 · silk · Costume Institute

John Held, Jr., the artist behind the witty imagery of this scarf set, was an important illustrator of the 1920s and 1930s. His work appeared in popular magazines like Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar and Redbook and his images of the quintessential flapper "Betty Co-Ed" and her cohort "Joe College" became iconic representations of the young-and-fashionable set during this period. In this example, a humorous rendition of tennis players in impossible poses, Held's graphic sense shines through in the way in which he used a checkerboard pattern to represent the net and then repeated the same pattern in tennis racket strings. These accessories, featuring the work of a known artist, exemplify the height of creativity in silk printing in the United States achieved during the 1930s.

Artist

Daventree|John Held Jr.

Date

ca. 1935

Medium

silk

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Mrs. Albert Ogden in memory of Sheldon Stewart, 1964