Lining Paper Illustration for Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Elihu Vedder's decorative design for the lining papers of his landmark 1883 edition of the Rubáiyát demonstrates the artist's mastery of ornamental composition. The interlocking pattern of gourds, grapes, and flowering vines creates a rhythmic all-over design rendered in ink and wash on tan paper. Vedder's illustrated Rubáiyát, with its integrated text and image, helped establish the aesthetic book as a major art form in late nineteenth-century America. His linear approach to decoration and sophisticated use of negative space influenced American Arts and Crafts design and anticipated modernist principles of pattern and surface.