Antique Aubusson French Rugs The O'Connell Guide

The Best of Aubusson Rugs, Carpets and tapestries

Alfred de Champeaux  
on the rugs and tapestries of Aubusson

A certain amount of obscurity envelopes the origin of the manufactory of Aubusson, which is now so active and celebrated. It would appear, however, from certain documents that it was founded in the 14th century, in consequence of an emigration of Flemish workmen into La Marche. The productions of the looms which they established there were soon in great request, but the tapestry made in the earliest looms at Aubusson could never rival in beauty that of Flanders. They lacked two indispensable conditions of success: good patterns and the best materials. At Aubusson they worked from the designs of the artists of that small town, which was isolated from artistic centres, and instead of the fine wools sent from England to Bruges and Antwerp, they had only the short fleeces of the sheep of the country. Owing to this double necessity they were obliged to produce largely and sell cheaply.

Antique tapis manufacture d'aubusson,

Protection granted Tne industrial importance of the town of  Aubusson did not escape the attention of Colbert, who did so much for the commercial development of France, and in 1669 he caused the king to sign a decree, the aim of which was to increase this prosperity, which may be called the great charter of the manufactories of Aubusson. This decree was intended to regulate the method of fabrication, the rights of the master-workers and their obligations; it allowed them besides to put on all their goods the name of Royal Manufactory of Tapestry, and it promised to remedy their want of good patterns and good dyes by sending them a painter and an expert dyer. At the same time it prohibited the introduction into France of foreign productions, and this prohibition was, of all the articles of the edict, the one which did the most for the fortunes of Aubusson. The articles fabricated in the Gobelins and Beauvais manufactories being monopolized by the Court, the Aubusson looms were the only ones left to provide the kingdom at large with tapestry. So the manufactures of this town increased rapidly; and later on, notwithstanding the misfortunes which the Edict of Nantes caused to the working population, who were mostly Protestant, and consequently exiled from France, the manufacturers of Aubusson declared in i717 that their looms produced yearly more than 3,000 hangings or pieces of tapestry.

In spite of his promise, the king had neither sent a painter nor a master-dyer to Aubusson, and the manufacturers were reduced to executing their tapestries from engravings, reproducing the compositions of Laurent and Lahire, Claude Vignon, and especially Francois Chauveau; or else they copied rough sketches of the pieces produced by the Gobelins manufactory. Thanks to the protection of Fagon, son of the great doctor, the manufactures of Aubusson obtained at last what they had long stood in need of. The painter Dumont, called le Romain, the painter Dumont le Romain was sent to this town by the king, the manufactories to 1755 he filled the office of painter to its manual factories. He established a school of design, by means of which he formed a class of skilled painters, who contributed greatly to raise the artistic standard of the manufacture. Dumont, who was paid by the king, engaged to furnish every year six pictures, and three designs for carpets intended for the manufactories at Aubusson. The king sent at the same time one of the most skilful master-dyers from the Gobelins manufactory, called Fimazeau, who improved the old methods employed by the tapestry-workers at Aubusson. On his departure he was replaced by Pierre de Montezert, one of an old family of tapestry-makers in La Marche. Dumont le Romain was succeeded as painter to the royal manufactories, in 1751, by the painter Jacques Juliard; and at the same time the Intendant of Moulins commissioned another painter, named Roby, to compose designs for carpets. His son Roby, who succeeded him, was the best painter employed at Aubusson. He undertook to furnish the manufacturers every year with two drawings of verdures. At this period, too, the best pupils in the schools of drawing in the town were allowed to go to Paris, to follow a course of instruction at the Royal Academy of Painting. They were maintained there at the expense of the State, and were required to send and bring back to Aubusson copies of the most remarkable pictures and tapestries executed at the Gobelins and Beauvais manufactories.

With the assistance of these painters, added to the improvement in its mode of dyeing, the manufacture of Aubusson attained a degree of prosperity equal to that which it owed to the protecting care of Colbert; the use of tapestry for covering furniture added also a new element of success to its looms.

Although they sometimes reproduced large historical compositions, copied from Gobelins tapestry, the tapestry-workers of Aubusson preferred executing graceful subjects, such as the decorative compositions of Gillot. They reproduced almost all the works of Watteau and Boucher; but their principal reputation was acquired from the fables of Lafontaine, and hunting subjects composed by J. B. Oudry. The painter Juliard was especially skilful in copying the sea-pieces of Joseph Vernet.

About 1754 there arrived at Aubusson several workmen who had studied in the Gobelins manufactory, and who exercised a very happy influence on the manufacture in general. They executed in different studios the difficult parts of the storied tapestries, amongst others the flesh-tints of the figures. Their work is easily recognized in certain pieces in which the heads are delicately wrought, while the rest of the composition is more roughly executed. With this help the Aubusson manufacturers believed themselves strong enough to try to rival the Gobelins and Beauvais fabrics. They offered to the Government to execute grand subjects either in high or low warp, but this proposition was not accepted.

Felletin, whose fortunes, in spite of internal dissensions and mutual jealousy, such as prevailed in the manufacturing towns of Flanders, were bound up with those of Aubusson, also regained its ancient prosperity, thanks to several clever manufacturers, such as Baudy de Naleche, Tixier, and Sallandrouze. In 1770, Jean Sallandrouze was sent to Lyons by his father, and there studied drawing under the direction of Bellanger, painter to the king. He hoped in this way to be able to obviate the necessity under which Felletin lay of applying to the painters of Aubusson for their patterns. The manufacture carried on at Felletin consisted mainly of pieces representing verdures and landscapes.

Antique louis XVI Aubusson carpet france,

Of all the painters of the 18th century, Huet furnished the greatest number of designs to the Aubusson manufactories, and he it was who inspired their best productions. When the painter Juliard retired in 1780, he was succeeded by Ranson, the author of many sketches less delicate and clever than those of Huet, but distinguished nevertheless for their grace and elegance. These sketches have served for the execution of a considerable number of panels, portieres, frieze panels, and coverings for furniture.

Commencement The industry of the town of Aubusson suffered   like other Places during the revolutionary period and the wars which followed it, but its looms were never entirely idle. Seeing that for a long time there would be no demand for tapestry de luxe, the manufacturers of Aubusson set to work to produce carpets and common tapestry, thus finding occupation for their workmen, and making use of the raw material of their own country. It was in this way that the manufacture of carpets began, whose use has become so general, in consequence of their moderate price.

Antique Aubusson Tapis d'epoque Louis Philippe

Under the Empire they resumed the manufacture of large carpets and fabrics for furniture, after the style of Percier and Fontaine, then in fashion. The new Court and its great dignitaries gave considerable orders to the manufactories of Aubusson for this kind of work. With this help the manufacture regained its former prosperity, and in proportion as luxury increased the fabrics became daily more finished. This progress was very marked from 1825 to 1842; but notwithstanding the fresh requirements of public wealth, it was not till the manufactories of Au

Present prosperityof themanufac tapestry for covering furniture that they quite regained their former prosperity. The specimens sent by them to the different international exhibitions which have taken place from time to time since the year 1852, have won for these two towns, whose best known representative was M. Sallandrouze de Lamornaix, a universal celebrity, far exceeding that gained by other countries for the execution of tapestry deluxe. It is easy to see that the workmen in these manufactories are masters of their art, that the manufacturers have employed men of talent for the preparation of their patterns, that their methods of dyeing and manufacture have made great progress, and that in the studios nothing has been neglected to secure the greatest possible perfection. The ancient prosperity of the time of Colbert has been regained, and in fact the manufactures of Aubusson and Felletin never employed so great a number of workmen as at the present day. It is right to add to these successful efforts those of the manufactories at Neuilly and Tourcoing, which are also distinguished for remarkably artistic workmanship.

From:

Tapestry: South Kensington Museum art handbooksBy Alfred de Champeaux Translated byMrs. Richard Foster SketchleyPublisherPub. for the Committee of Council on education by Chapman and Hall, 1887

Helen Churchill Hungerford Candee on Aubusson Rugs

(Mrs. Candee was a popular writer but to most of us she is remembered as the feminist who survived the sinking of the Titanic)

PERHAPS because of certain old and elegant carpets lying under-foot in the glow and shadows of old drawing-rooms that we love, the name of Aubusson is one of interesting meaning. And yet history of tapestry weaving at Aubusson lacks the importance that gilds the Gobelins and Beauvais.It just escaped that sine qua non, the dower of a king's favor. But let us be chronological, and not anticipate.

If antiquity is the thing, Aubusson claims it. There is in the town this interesting tradition that when the invincible Charles Martel beat the enemies of Christianity and hammered out the word peace with his sword-blade, a lot of the subdued Saracens from Spain remained in the neighborhood. It was at Poitiers in 732 that the final blow was given to show the hordes of North Africa that while a part of Spain might be theirs, they must stop below the Pyrenees.

Antique Tapis Manufacture d'Aubusson

When swords are put by, the empty hand turns to its accustomed crafts of peace. Poitiers is a weary journey from Africa if the land ways are hostile, and all to be traversed afoot. Rather than return, the conquered Saracens stayed, so runs the legend of Aubusson, and quite naturally fell into their home-craft of weaving. They had a pretty gift indeed to bestow, for at that time, as in ages before, the world's best fabrics came from the luxurious East. And so the Saracens, defeated at Poitiers by Charles Martel, wandered to nearby Aubusson, wove their cloths and gave the town the chance to set its earliest looms at a date far back in the past.

The centuries went on, however, without much left in the way of history-fabric or woven fabric until we approach the time when tapestry-history begins all over France, like sparse flowers glowing here and there in the early spring wood.

When the Great Louis, with Colbert at his sumptuous side, was by way of patronizing magnificently those arts which contributed to his own splendor, he set his allseeing eye upon Aubusson, and thought to make it a royal factory. He was far from establishing it—that was more than accomplished already, not so much by the legendary Saracens as by the busy populace who had as early as 1637 as many as two thousand workers. Going back a little farther we find a record of four tapestries woven there for Rheims.

Antique Verdure Landscape Tapestry Panel

It was, perhaps, this very prosperity, this ability to stand alone that made Louis and Colbert think it worth while to patronize the works at Aubusson. But it must be said that at this time (1664) the factory was deteriorating. Tapestry works are as sensitive as the veriest exotic and without the proper conditions fail and fade. The wrong matter here was primarily the cartoons, which were of the poorest. No artist controlled them, and the workers strayed far from the copy set long before. Added to that, the wool was of coarse, harsh quality and the dyeing was badly done. All three faults remediable, thought the two chief forces in the kingdom.

So Louis XIV announced to the sixteen hundred weavers of Aubusson that he would give their works the conspicuous privilege of taking on the name of the Royal Manufactory at Aubusson. And, moreover, he declared his wish to send them an artist to draw worthily, and a master of the important craft of dyeing fast and lovely colors.

Colbert drew up a series of articles and stipulations, long papers of rules and restrictions which were considered a necessary part of fine tapestry weaving. These papers are tiresome to read—the constitution of many a nation or a state is far less verbose. They give the impression that the craft of tapestry weaving is beset with every sort of small deceit, so protection must be the arrangement between master and worker, and between the factory and the great outside world, lying in wait to tear with avaricious claws any fabric, woven or written, that this document leaves unprotected. You get, too, the impression that weavers took themselves a little too seriously. There must have been other arts and crafts in the world than theirs, but if so these men of long documents ignored it.

Aubusson, then, took heart at the encouragement of the king and his prime minister, enjoyed their fine new title to flaunt before the world which lacked it, pored over their new Articles of Faith, and awaited the new artist and the new alchemist of colors. But Louis XIV was a busy man, and Paris presented enough activity to consume all his hours but the scant group he allowed himself for sleep. So Aubusson was forgotten. Wars and pleasures both ravaged the royal purse, and no money was left for indulgences to a tapestry factory lying leagues distant from Paris and the satisfying Gobelins.

Then came the agitation of religious conflict during which Louis XIV was persuaded, coerced, nagged into the condition of mind which made him put pen to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the document that is ever playing about the fortunes of tapestry weaving. This was in 1685. Aubusson had struggled along on hope for twenty years, under its epithet Royal, but now it had to lose its best workers to the number of two hundred. The Protestants had ever been among the best workers in Louis' kingdom, and by his prejudice he lost them. Germany received some of the fugitives, notably, Pierre Merrier.

Near Aubusson were Felletin and Bellegarde, the three towns forming the little group of factories of La Marche. When the king's act brought disaster to Aubusson, her two neighbours suffered equally.

There was also another reason for a sagging of prosperity. Beauvais was rapidly gaining in size and importance under the patronage of the king and the wise rule of its administrators. Beauvais with her high- and low-warp looms, her artists from Paris and her privilege to sell in the open market, lured from Aubusson the patronage that might have kept her strong.

Thus things went on to the end of the Seventeenth Century and the first quarter of the Eighteenth. Then in 1731 came deliverers in the persons of the painters, Jean Joseph du Mons and Pierre de Montezert, and an able dyer who aided them. Prosperity began anew. Not the prosperity of the first half of the Seventeenth Century, which was its best period, but a strong, healthy productiveness which has lasted ever since. Two articles of faith it adheres to—that the looms shall be invariably low, and that the threads of the warp shall be of wool and wool only.

Large quantities of strong-color verdures from La Marche and notably from Aubusson are offered to the buyer throughout France. They are as easily adapted to the wood panels of a modern dining-room as is stuff by the yard, the pattern being merely a mass of trees divisible almost anywhere. The color scheme is often worked out in blues instead of greens; a narrow border is on undisturbed pieces, and the reverse of the tapestry is as full of loose threads as the back of a cashmere rug. For the most part these fragments are the work of the Eighteenth Century. Older ones, with warmer colors introduced bring much higher prices.

The Tapestry Book By  Helen Churchill Hungerford Candee. Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1912