Plate 38 from "Prismes: 40 Planches de Dessins et Coloris Nouveaux"

Design with spirals of square-edged scales rendered with reddish-purple and outlined with white and overlapping triangular motifs with one zig-zagging edge colored with shades of reddish-purple, light bluish-purple and white over a background with horizontal zig-zagging stripes colored alternatingly with lilac and a darker shade of bluish-purple.

The design is part of a pochoir pattern book, titled "Prismes: 40 Planches de Dessins et Coloris Nouveaux" (Prisms: 40 Plates of Designs and New Colors), with Art Deco designs, probably for textiles, created by Émile-Allain Séguy and published in Paris by Éditions d’Art Charles Moreau, probably in the second half of the 1920s or the early 1930s. The book consists of a title page and 40 plates numbered 1-40, each with one design, bound with dark blue linen boards. The designs contain a variety of geometric, abstract and semi-abstract motifs executed in various colors, some of them including natural-inspired figures such as birds and flowers. All of them are typical of the Art Deco style, which was characterized by its eclecticism, drawing from a variety of sources that sought to combine old European design traditions with the modern style diffused by avant-garde art, while also reflecting the romantic fascination with early Egyptian and Meso-American "exotic" cultures promoted by archaeological discoveries of the times.