Design for a Panel

This ornamental design study demonstrates the decorative vocabulary of the 1890s—scrolling acanthus leaves, symmetrical flourishes, and central floral motifs rendered in gold and blue. Created at Cooper Union Art School during a period of intensive design education, the work exemplifies academic training in composition and pattern-making. Such foundational studies in balance, repetition, and visual hierarchy would prove essential as artists of this era began experimenting with sequential narrative formats. The formal principles governing decorative panels—compartmentalization, framing devices, and rhythmic arrangement—would soon find new application in the emerging language of comic strips.