Les soies teintes aux Gobelins

Abstract

The Mobilier national, the national agency in charge of furniture and tapestry which was the successor to the ‘Garde meubles’, the royal furniture storage services, today holds a unique collection historic textiles. This collection of almost 30,000 items consists primarily of silk pieces commissioned during the First Empire to decorate Napoléon’s palaces. The Emperor was preoccupied by the prosperity of his Empire and he gave active encouragement Lyon silk manufacturers. This collection has been scrupulously catalogued by Chantal and Jean Coural (Soieries Empire, Paris, RMN, 1980). In 1807, the silks furnished by Camille Pernon for the Emperor’s grand cabinet at the palace at Saint-Cloud proved disappointing on account of their fading. It was clear that some sort of system of control of the dyes used by the Lyon silk weavers was necessary, in particular for the major commission, in 1811, for the decoration of the Versailles palace. This system of control was put into place by Jean-Louis Roard who was director of the dyeing shops at the Gobelins manufacture in Paris. The Mobilier national today holds several boxes which contain the dyed silk skeins and ribbons produced to serve as reference standards for the makers. This is a unique and unusual group of items, bearing witness to the rigorous approach of the chemist Jean-Louis Roard and to the role he played in the silk industry under the Empire. All the elements show the degree of perfection reached in the realm of dyeing, thanks to the strict measures of control set up by the Garde-Meuble.

Keywords

• textile
• hue
• dyeing
• silk
• silk fabrics
• Lyons silk manufacture