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| Toile de Jouy |
Courtesy of French Fabrics |
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This kind of fabric is
named after the Manufacture Royale de Jouy (Royal Factory of Jouy).
Jouy-en-Josas is a little town near Versailles, southwest of Paris.
Illustration: Les travaux
de la manufacture
(Working at the Factory)
(Working at the Factory)
drawing from JB Huet, printed in 1784 |
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The "Manufacture
Royale" de Jouy was founded in 1760 in Jouy-en-Josas along the Bièvre,
a small river, by Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, the descendant of a
family of dyers in Württemberg. The new factory grew until 1806, when it
had 1,300 workers printing kilometers of fabric.
Illustration: Les délices des
quatre saisons (Four Seasons delights)
drawing from JB Huet, printed in 1785 |
| Oberkampf
wanted his factory to stay abreast of technical progress, so he sent some
of his key workers abroad to learn new technologies. For example, one of
them brought back from Switzerland a machine able to print fabric using
copper sheets.
Coppper allows very precise drawings, much more detailed
than on carved wood, which was the medium used to print. Jean-Baptiste
Huet (1745-1811) was the artist whose drawings for copper sheets produced
camaïeux (cameos), later called toiles de Jouy (Jouy fabrics). By 1782
camaïeux had become such a success that the factory owned a hundred
different drawings for printing them. |
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In 1797 Oberkampf improved the
copper machine by creating a carved copper roll, which was capable of
printing 5,000 meters of fabric in one day!
Illustration: Le petit buveur (little
drinker), 1784 |
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Famous painters began to
work for the
Manufacture Royale de Jouy: Hippolyte le Bas, Jean-Louis Demarne, Horace
Vernet, all of whom designed for the new Imperial taste for Egypt and
mythology.
Illustration: Les
quatre parties du monde
(Four parts of the World)
(Four parts of the World)
drawing from JB Huet, printed circa 1785 |
| But the
Napoleonic Wars took a toll on trade, and the factory began to lose
clients and suppliers. Its decline from 1810 lasted until 1843, when it
was closed. Some new prints are still made using old drawings now in the
Textile Museum in Mulhouse. |
| Note: Please
note that fabrics on this page are ancient ones, they are NOT sold on this
website. |
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Copyright © 2002
Manoir des Lavandes
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