{
"data": {
"id": 109976,
"accession_number": "1928.583",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Americana Prints: Rhapsody (No. 700), 1927. John Held, Jr. (American, 1889\u20131958), Stehli Silks Corporation (United States; Pennsylvania, Lancaster; and New York, New York, 1840\u2013c. 1955). Silk crepe; plain weave, roller printed; overall: 47.6 x 53.3 cm (18 3/4 x 21 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Stehli Silks Corporation, 1928.583",
"current_location": "234 Textile Gallery",
"title": "Rhapsody (No. 700)",
"series": "Americana Prints",
"creation_date": "1927",
"creation_date_earliest": 1927,
"creation_date_latest": 1927,
"artists_tags": [
"male",
"gender unknown"
],
"culture": [
"America, New York"
],
"technique": "Silk crepe; plain weave, roller printed",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Textiles",
"collection": "Textiles",
"type": "Textile",
"measurements": "Overall: 47.6 x 53.3 cm (18 3/4 x 21 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.476,
"width": 0.533
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301474,
"title": "An Approach to Museum Objects",
"description": "An Approach to Museum Objects. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 3-June 30, 1958).",
"opening_date": "1958-03-04T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 688299,
"title": "American Printed Silks, 1927\u20131947",
"description": "American Printed Silks, 1927\u20131947. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 9, 2025-November 8, 2026).",
"opening_date": "2025-11-09T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "This silk fabric design, created by popular advertising illustrator and artist John Held in 1927, was part of Stehli Silk Corporation\u2019s Americana Prints, series III. According to Stehli\u2019s promotional material at the time, it was George Gershwin\u2019s 1924 composition Rhapsody in Blue that inspired Held\u2019s textile design, also called Rhapsody. The Americana Prints sought to capture American culture in the 1920s, telling stories about contemporary American life during the Jazz Age, a time in which American music and dance styles gained worldwide popularity. Rhapsody was produced in several difference colors, in addition to the blue version seen here.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80002261"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Duncan, Alastair. American Art Deco. New York: Abrams, 1986.",
"page_number": "p. 144",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Mendes, Valerie D. Novelty Fabrics. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1988.",
"page_number": "plate 6",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "McKnight, Lola S. The Americana Prints: A Collection of Artist-Designed Textiles. Thesis submitted to the Division of Graduate Studies, SUNY, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. December 1993.",
"page_number": "p. 175",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Boardman, Michelle, and Allentown Art Museum. All That Jazz : Printed Fashion Silks of the \u201920s and \u201930s. Allentown, Pa.: Allentown Art Museum, 1998.",
"page_number": "cover, p. 26",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "\"Exhibitions Through February 2026: American Printed Silks, 1927-1947.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 65, no. 4 (2025): 11.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 11, 14 and Mentioned: p. 11",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM-2025-04"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1928.583",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of the Stehli Silks Corporation",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Textile Gallery",
"athena_id": 109976,
"creators": [
{
"id": 56734,
"description": "John Held, Jr. (American, 1889\u20131958)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "designed by",
"biography": "John Held, Jr. was an editorial and advertising illustrator, as well as a print maker, who saw his work achieve its greatest popularity during the Jazz Age of the 1920s. Largely self-taught, he never graduated from high school nor did he attend art school. In 1912, at the age of 23, he left Salt Lake City for New York where he worked for an advertising company and as a magazine illustrator. By 1919, he was producing cover art for Vanity Fair, as well as cartoons for Harper\u2019s Bazaar, The New Yorker, and Life magazine. He designed book covers for F. Scott Fitzgerald, and costumes and stage sets for Broadway productions. Held was the subject of a one-man retrospective exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution that traveled throughout the United States and Canada between January 1969 and January 1972.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1889",
"death_year": "1958",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
},
{
"id": 47400,
"description": "Stehli Silks Corporation (United States; Pennsylvania, Lancaster; and New York, New York, 1840\u2013c. 1955)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "manufacturer",
"biography": "Founded in 1837 in Obfelden, Switzerland, by the Stehli family, the original cotton mill transitioned to weaving silk in 1840. By the 1890s, half of the silk produced by Stehli was being shipped to the United States; at that point moving production closer to the customer base made economic sense. Stehli opened their first US mill in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1898 and at the same time established an office in New York City, becoming one of the first American silk manufacturers. By the mid-1920s, Stehli operated five mills in three states\u2014Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. In those two decades, Stehli\u2019s business increased fourteen fold. A significant product line was their three Americana Prints series of 1925-1927, under art director and artist Kneeland \u201cRuzzie\u201d Green. In a deliberate attempt to shift the silk industry away from traditional French design, the three series focused on imagery of contemporary American life. Fifteen well-known artists were commissioned to design 86 silk patterns.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 2
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1928-10-18T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1927,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1927",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:05:46.898000"
}
}