Royal Factories - The Royal Tapestry Workshops - Cultural Paris

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Royal Factories - The Royal Tapestry Workshops
By Coline Duvall

T he site today houses, as well as the still working Gobelins high relief tapestry workshops, some of the workshops making Beauvais low relief tapestries, established in Paris in 1940 but also the site named "La Savonnerie", a carpet factory, which was combined with the Gobelins in 1825.

Tapestry-making today

There are two different forms of tapestry-makings :

• The high relief (or high warp looms) when the tapestry is made on a vertical working plan.
• The low relief (or low warp looms) when the tapestry is made on an horizontal but slightly up risen working plan.

To become a tapestry-weaver the student must go through (for low and high relief tapestry) an apprenticeship of four-years. After that period of time only, he/she is ready for tapestry weaving. Nevertheless, the apprentice will in fact, become an actual tapestry weaver after his first year only of a compulsory weaving training.
There are now 120 tapestry weavers at the "Gobelins", 60 at «Beauvais» and 30 at «la Savonnerie».

Today the site houses three various buildings :

• One houses the Gobelins high relief tapestry,
• The second one, the workshops making Beauvais low relief tapestries
• The third one, La Savonnerie carpet factory

The Gobelins today

As a State Factory the Gobelins now produce for the State only. Its production goes to state buildings, palaces, castles, official and diplomatic presentations.

It may be wall-hangings, carpets, decoration for furniture, upholstery for chairs, sofas, screens. If it is inspired by ancient motifs it also uses contemporary models.
The cartoons are drawn from copies provided by various well-known photographers. Although their patterns may be figurative, they now tend to be more abstract.

Background

Colbert, then minister of cultural affairs under Louis XIV created the three state factories of Gobelins.

For more than three centuries the Gobelins Tapestry Factory has played an exceptional role in the history of French decorative art, more particularly in the royal palaces. It took his name from a fifteenth-century family of dyers, which never wove a single piece of fabric.

In 1662, after a plan initiated by Henry IV, Colbert purchased the Gobelins property and brought the dyers and numerous Flemish tapestry-weavers scattered in different parts of Paris under one and the same roof.

The production of the Royal Gobelins factory was only limited to royal orders. Charles Le Brun, the official painter of Louis XIV, was appointed director of the Works in 1663.

Furniture Factory created by Colbert, was placed under the directorship of Charles Le Brun and it is to him that the initial success of the Gobelins is due.

He had under him a whole team of artists who had been brought together at the Hotel des Gobelins and participate in the creation of furnishing and the decoration of the royal residences.

The workshops, using then, both high warp and low warp looms, included 250 tapestry-makers who lived with their families within the Gobelins walls. For that reason, Colbert had to enlarge several times the area.

The master tapestry-makers were then reduced to secondary roles such as executants or shop supervisors. Until this time the cartoons had been deliberately incomplete, simple sketches which had given the weavers great freedom of transposition and interpretation. For these Le Brun substituted models, which were real paintings.

From 1663 and to Le Brun’s death in 1690 the Works wove 19 high warp hangings (197 pieces) and 34 low warp ones (296 pieces). Pierre Mignard succeeded to Le Brun. Due to financial difficulties the Crown Furniture Works laid the workers off in 1694. In 1699, the Gobelins Works reopened its door only when the shops were able to resume work.



THE ROYAL GOBELINS WORKS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the King’s Superintendent of Buildings, was chosen to put the establishment back into operation. Until 1782 its directorship was entrusted to architects who were the king’s building supervisors in Paris.

The most famous of them was Soufflot (1713-1780)

A painter was appointed inspector. He was to control the execution of the tapestries direct and supervise the work of the painters responsible for supplying the models. In 1748 a post of super-inspector was created for Jean-Baptiste Oudry to "supervise the manufacture" of the hangings. His influence at the Gobelins was a decisive one.

His directive to the shop supervisors was "to imitate the effects of oil painting". In order to enable the weavers to convey the multiple shades of the palette the dye shop had to increase the number of colors traditionally used. Where it took 141 shades for a Le Brun tapestry, 365 were now needed for the weaving of an Oudry tapestry.

At this period, an important development in taste occurred. It showed itself in an orientation towards a lighter art with softer shades.

The great innovation of the first half of the eighteen-century was the introduction of tapestries with "Alentours" (surroundings). The main subject was placed in the center surrounded by ornamental motifs that served the frame.

Another innovation introduced by the Marquis de Marigny in 1762, was the weaving of portraits of the king, the queen and the royal family. From this point on, the Gobelins turned to an increasingly servile imitation of painting.

Its reputation spread over most of Europe but around 1760, the Works experienced financial difficulties, which became increasingly serious, despite the appointment of Jean-Baptiste Pierre in 1782 as director of the Gobelins.

The Revolution and the Gobelins in the Nineteenth Century

Major changes occurred as early as 1791 in the Works. The tapestry-makers now received weekly salaries and were no longer paid on the basis of their production.

This system, though it made operation difficult during the Revolution, saved the Gobelins from ruin.

Under the authority of the general administrator of Napoleon’s household it was to work exclusively for the Emperor. No tapestry was put on a loom without his being consulted. It was in this spirit that the furniture for the Emperor’s Grand Cabinet in the Tuileries was executed. David himself supplied models.

Over 80 tapestry-makers were assigned to the vertical and horizontal looms. In 1825, the latter were sent to Beauvais, and from then on the Gobelins tapestries were woven exclusively on the vertical, or high warp looms.

In 1803 the use of new chemical mordents enabled the dye shop to provide the weavers with increasingly subtle hues, but the dyes had a poor resistance to light.

In 1824, Chevreuil became the director of the dye laboratory

His theory of the chromatic colors enabled him to reduce the number of dyes that the weaver needed by half (14,420 hues distributed into 72 ranges of pure dyes). Before that 30,000 dyes distributed into a thousand ranges of 36 hues were necessary.

At the fall of the Empire, the Commune, the Gobelins fire on May 1871, (76 tapestries burned, 80 m of buildings destroyed), left the Factory half ruined. Despite many vicissitudes, Darcel, the administrator, was made responsible for relaunching the Gobelins Factory.

An effort was now made to give back to tapestry its true function as decorative art. Most of the models were to be designed for the decoration of public buildings, gala rooms in the Opera, the Elysée Palace, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Palais du Luxembourg.

Gustave Geoffroy became director of the Gobelins in 1905 and to 1926, tried, often with talent, to renew an art, which the Gobelins weavers were then practicing with a dangerous virtuosity. But many years were still needed before one could really speak of a rebirth of tapestry.

This was above all, the achievement of the painter Jean Lurçat. That same year, at the instigation of the new administrator, Guillaume Janneau, a new approach was made with vegetable dyes.

The Gobelins was moved to Aubusson during the war and Jeanneau invited Lurçat, Gromaire and Dubreuil "to study, create and supervise, if possible the execution of great tapestries".

A whole generation of cartoon-painters was to follow. Soon a second wave of abstract painters came.

The Gobelins Factory has managed to maintain an ever-living tradition and an incomparable technique.



THE NATIONAL SAVONNERIE FACTORY

In 1663, after the Gobelins, Colbert reorganized the Savonnerie Factory. In 1826, under Charles X the Savonnerie was finally set up within the confines of the Gobelins. Under Charles Le Brun, its first artistic director, the Savonnerie enjoyed a period of exceptional activity when its production, reserved exclusively for the king, went to the furnishing of the residences of Louis XIV or served as diplomatic gifts to foreign sovereigns or ambassadors.

Le Brun provided the models for the decoration of Versailles, the Gallery of Apollo and the Great Gallery of the Louvre Palace. The 93 carpets of which constituted the great undertaking of the period.

Throughout the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the Savonnerie continued to maintain a high standard of production.

Carpets were produced to decorate the Châteaux of Versailles, Bellevue, trianon and Fontainebleau, including the one for the marriage of ouis XV and Marie Leszczynska in Fontainebleau and one for the Queen’s bedroom in Versailles.

After difficult times under the Revolution, the Factory revived under the Empire. Immense carpets were produced, particularly for the Palace of the Tuileries.

Under Louis-Philippe new models were created, for carpets of very large dimensions, such as the carpet for the Notre-Dame choir (200 m2).

Under the Third Republic the looms were used almost exclusively for the weaving of wall tapestries.

In the first years of the XXth century artists like Dieterle, Bracquemond and Hannotin provided cartoons for a number of carpets.

Screen panels were woven after Odilon Redon, Van Gogh, and Cézanne.

The shop’s staff was considerably reduced during the war. The Savonnerie has, however, taken on a lease of life after this trying period.

His recent creations after Miro, Vasarely, Agam testify to the vitality of its renascence.



THE ROYAL FACTORIES OF BEAUVAIS

This too is a creation of Colbert’s. Established in 1664 was to manufacture for the open market to compete with the Flanders tapestries. It was thus conceived as a private enterprise subsidized to a considerable extent by the Royal Treasury but having to live by its sales to the private trade or to the Crown. Louis Hinart, its director, had attracted a large number of Flemish who wove verdure and landscapes with small figures. In 20 years he supplied the Crown Repository with 254 tapestries.

After a difficult period at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, Oudry took over the directorship for twenty years, displaying an intense activity.

As he had done at the Gobelins, he demanded of the weavers a faithful reproduction of the colors. Thanks to the tapestries of this period, Beauvais became known throughout the world, even to far-off China, and foreign sovereigns were eager to obtain its precious and refined productions.

After Oudry’s death Beauvais turned increasingly to the manufacture of furniture, upholstery for chairs, sofas, screens.

This intense activity developed during the second half of the eighteenth century, furniture, and upholstery being made to match the hangings.

Manufacture was interrupted by the Revolution in 1792 and was not resumed. When the factory reopened it was as a state enterprise.

Its situation for a number of years was precarious (only 6 weavers were left). Under Napoleon the Beauvais factory revived, and during the nineteenth century it manufactured seat upholstery, chasubles, miters, procession canopies, and a few replicas of old cartoons and endless eighteenth century imitations.

The establishment gradually declined. Jean Ajalbert, its new director from 1917, tried to revive it by opening the doors to contemporary painters. Paul Poiret and Raoul Dufy furnished models for furniture.

In 1936, the Beauvais Factory was incorporated into the National Furniture Storehouse, like the Gobelins and the Savonnerie.

The Beauvais shops were evacuated to Aubusson during the war in 1939.

They, nevertheless, continued to work and finished the weaving of a set of drawing-room furniture after Lurçat. It had been planned that it would return to the Oise in 1940 but the June bombings entirely destroyed the factory buildings. At the end of that same year it set itself up in Paris in the Gobelins enclosure.

Henceforth the destiny of Beauvais was to become progressively linked with that of the Gobelins.

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