The Cité internationale de la tapisserie launches a partnership with the Studio Ymer & Malta for the edition of a mini-collection of furniture and decoration pieces. A project which serves the economy of the sector.

A delegated edition project of six pieces integrating weavings of Aubusson tapestry is being made, taking the form of a private-public partnership between the Cité and the Studio Ymer & Malta (Paris). Within the scope of the regional Found for the creation of contemporary tapestries, the Cité entrusted the studio with the conception, the development and the sale of this mini-collection. The studio is in charge of the re-weaving of the pieces (to seven copies, added to the prototype exemplary kept by the Cité).

The objective is to generate activity in the workshops of the region, through the orders of some pieces, which carry innovative and modern ideas. For the studio director, Valérie Maltaverne, it is about leaning on the traditional artistic profession by coming up to the professional practices’ habits with a fresh perspective and associate the weavers in this procedure of research and innovation. This procedure already gave birth to luxury collections with the artistic profession of leather and marquetry.

Thus, five designers were invited to discover the know-how of Aubusson, meet the professionals, to readapt the conceptions of their pieces: Benjamin Graindorge, Sylvain Rieu-Piquet, Ferréol Babin, Sébastian Bergne and Kenza Drancourt. The prototypes of the works will integrate the Cité’s collections.

The Studio Ymer & Malta, design studio and editor of exceptional furniture since 2009, is a research and innovation lab dealing with luxury creations, where the biggest names in design converse with the craftsmen.

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Discover the work of the studio Ymer & Malta on its website

At the crossing of the disciplines. In the beginning of the 21st Century, Aubusson’s tapestry know a new lease of life as it rebinds with the contemporary creation and renews its uses upon contact with other disciplines or through research and innovation programs.

Initiated since the end of the 20th Century with creators coming from the design world, such as Sylvain Dubuisson, this new period is truly inaugurated thanks to the common public order of the State, department Council of Creuse, with the support of the regional Council of the Limousin, the “Tenture de l’an 2001” in eleven pieces, themed on inventions and discoveries of yesterday and of today serving humanity. It gathers within the art of tapestry artists from diverse backgrounds, such as Philippe Favier or Reza Farkhondeh. The public order or private initiative allows the creation of important weavings, entrusted to well-known artists: Robert Combas, Hervé Di Rosa, Fabrice Hyber or Gérard Garouste.

For the “Cité de la tapisserie”, the priority is given to rebound with each and every form of contemporary creations, so that the illustrators, designers and house architects merge with the plastic artists and innovate in terms of use and conception, revitalizing the tapestry and its place on the art market. Because, from now on, the artistic creation bound to the tapestry production is polymorphous: painting, drawing, photograph or digital picture, by way of sculpture or architecture.

Thus, since 2010, the call for projects of the regional Funding for the creation of contemporary tapestries allows each year to give a strong signal to the Aubusson tapestry, readable both by the contemporary art connoisseurs and the general public, through the request for talented creators, offspring of the painter’s tapestry movement of the 20th Century. The calls for projects allowed the Cité internationale de la tapisserie to sustain the contemporary collection by selecting and having original sketches weaved, amongst hundreds of propositions.

The regional Funding for contemporary tapestry creation allows also the Cité internationale to revitalize the creation and the contemporary collection thanks to the development of specific projects, creations in partnership with other institutions and galleries by commissioning the artists or designers: tapestry for the Centenary of the First World War, furniture collection, weaved works of the artists Clément Cogitore or eL Seed etc.

Beyond the constitution of a referring collection, the Cité internationale plays a role in the tapestry edition as well. It encourages the weaving development in the Aubusson-Felletin workshops by private individuals, businesses or institutions, by letting them get in touch with the regional craftsman and offering a technical follow-up to complete their project to acquire a weaved work successfully.

The yearly call for creation allows notably highlighting a catalog of artistic projects exploitable for Aubusson-Felletin weavings: Laurent Grasso Marlène Mocquet, Philippe Rahm, Perrine Vigneron etc. The laureate projects, weaved for the contemporary Funding of the Cité internationale can be the subject of re-weavings, in the limit of eight copies.

The 20th Century is a period of disruption, where the tapestry reinforces its link with the avant-garde creation. Some institutions such as the Aubusson National School of Decorative Arts and personalities like Antoine-Marius Martin (School’s director) , Marie Cuttoli (collector and textile editor), play here a leading role. But history remembers mostly one name: the painter Jean Lurçat, founder of the tapestry renewal from the 1940’s onwards.

Aubusson’s National School of Decorative Arts

In 1884, Aubusson’s municipal drawing School, founded in the 18th Century (in the move of the royal tapestry Manufacture reform), becomes the National School of Decorative Arts, beside Paris’ and Limoges’, with the same director Auguste Louvrier de Lajolais (1829-1908). The latter relies on professors from Paris to supply both provincial cities with models.

The School, so called “ENAD” in French (Ecole Nationale d’Arts Décoratifs), plays an important part in the renewal of the tapestry art and technique in the 20th Century. The School dispenses courses of low- and high-warp weaving and “Saracen” embroidery, known under the name of Aubusson cross stitch embroidery. Well-known artists furnishes cartoons: Pierre-Victor Galland (1822-1892) , painter decorator; Charles Genuys  (1852-1928), chief architect of the historical monuments; Henry de Waroquier (1881-1970), painter and engraver, professor at the Estienne School in Paris.

The School of Decorative Arts renews the tapestry

From 1917, the Aubusson School’s new director, Antoine-Marius Martin (1869-1955) wishes to see the art of weaving evolve.

- Renew the models by looking for different painters of his era, notably postimpressionists;

- Retain in the medieval tapestries, characteristics transposable to the modernity: reduce the amount of colors, weave with much larger threads, use a more assertive technical writing (battage[1], stripes, piping etc.)

The 19th Century is marked by the emergence of great manufactures, directed by industrial captains. The internal decoration assume greater significance in the exhibit of industrial products, then to the universal exhibitions over whose the manufactures would present their prettiest realizations.

The revolutionary era prompts a strong activity crisis. But from the beginning of the 19th Century, the recovery is spectacular with the development of great manufactures, which gather for the first time all the know-how necessary to the realization of rugs and tapestries, from the painting of the cartoons/models, dying, to the weaving. The Sallandrouze family is the root of this industrialization with the biggest firm.

Thus, the century is marked by great establishments, which will now dominate the small workshops and leave an architectural print onto the city.

Knowing a continuing rise since the middle of the 18th Century, the production of hooked rugs and low-pile carpets intensifies to overtake the tapestry one. In the early 1860’s, 2220 workers are more busy producing rugs in Aubusson. The furniture weaving (lining in armchairs, sofas, curtains, fire screens etc.) encountered a strong development as well.

Paradoxically, the rug and tapestry history in the 19th Century remains to be written with an eclectic production still poorly known (neoclassicism, neo-gothic and orientalism).

The creation of the Aubusson National School of Decorative Arts in 1884, one of the three first schools in France, with Paris and Limoges, marks a new lease of life.

After the difficult period of the Nantes Edict revocation in the late 17th Century, the 18th Century and its new decorative momentum is a period of trading prosperity for the manufacturers.

The royal Manufacture reform

Following the Nantes Edict revocation, the manufacture is in a very bad situation: bad weaving and dying quality, weak artistic level of the cartoons.

During the 1720’s, the royal administration implemented with the profession a deep reform of the royal Manufacture, which ends up to new status in 1731. It allowed engaging a real technical, artistic and commercial rise of the manufacture, which would radiate over the entire Europe.

The Kings painter is finally affected to Aubusson to bring there once a year his new cartoons inspired by the artistic actuality in Paris: Jean-Joseph Dumons (1687-1779). The tapestry production leaned on the adaptation of great models created by Bouchet, Watteau, Oudry or Huet.

Rapidly, the renewed prosperity brings the manufacturers to get their own models to Aubussonnais artists like Finet, Barraband or Roby, who will soon realize themselves in grisaille cartoons – tone-on-tone painting, in cameo, using different shades of grey, from white to black, to give an illusion of embossed design. The artistic offer diversifies itself.

The taste transforms completely comparing to the 17th Century; the new compositions are simpler, first of all created in a decorative purpose. The Enlightenment century would prefer to great heroic scenes more profane subjects: bucolic and happy landscapes, picturesque, greeneries and oriental scenes (the “Chinoiseries”, that is imitations of the Chinese style), colored scenes of child’s play or country life… The mythology is readapted to a gallant style, it is more researched to please or to affect.

In the 17th Century, the Aubussonais and Felletinois workshops received a State surge of interest with regard to them. The royal edicts influence the production organization.

The royal Manufacture advent

In 1664, the royal administration (from Superintendent Colbert’s demand) requested the Aubussonais merchants-manufacturers to bring enhancements to the tapestry making.

The meetings follow to end up on the 18th of May 1665 in the “Orders and status of the merchants, tapestry masters and workers of the city of Aubusson”, confirmed by Louis XIV in July of the same year.

Rules are established:

• A minimal duration of three years of apprenticeship, followed by four years of mentoring before the access to the mastery ; 
• The “Jurés gardes” (“Judges-guards”) are expected to control the quality of the raw materials and finished products ; 
• The King commits to furnish Aubusson with a painter and a dyer (which will take time to be made concrete); 
• A brand is weaved on the selvage: “MRDA” (“Manufacture royale d’Aubusson”);
• The tapestries must now be clinched with a blue piping. 

Colbert does not gather all the manufacturers in the same huge manufacture, but rather allows every Aubusson workshop to write down in capital letters “ROYAL TAPESTRIES MANUFACTURE” on the frontispiece of their door.

Nonetheless, the weavers enjoy the organization corresponding to the title: the weavers’ fraternity, placed under the patronage of the “Sainte-Barbe”, in the manner of the Flemish weavers’ fraternity. The celebration of the “Sainte-Barbe” on the 4th of December becomes a non-working festivity day.

Emigrations during the revocation of the Nantes Edict

During the 17th Century, in a few decades, Aubusson and Felletin distances themselves from one another, as Felletin stayed faithful to the Catholicism while a lot of Aubusson inhabitants adopted the reformed religion.

The Nantes Edict, ratified by Henri IV in 1598, permitted the free exercising of the Protestantism but its revocation by Louis XIV on the 22nd of October 1685 compels to exile those who refuse to recant their faith.

So was the destiny of more than 200 Aubussonnais weavers and their families, who gained Switzerland, where many settled down in the Bern region, then in Germany.

In Berlin, the Barraband family weaves cartoons from Beauvais after the drawings of Louis XIV’s ornament makers; near Nuremberg, the Deschazeaux family establishes in Erlangen, the Claravaux and Peux weavers in Schwabach, Mercier in Dresden.

For Aubusson, this trauma weakens the production qualitatively and quantitatively during around forty years, until the reform of the royal Manufacture initiated by the public authorities from 1726.

Saracen embroideries, stitched tapestry, digital tapestry, tufted rug, wool and felt creation, textile designs etc. To the “tapisserie d’Aubusson” professional community is added other textile actors, who, with the existence of specialized galleries and exhibition spaces, come to strengthen the field of the textile and weaved art in Aubusson.

The presence of a professional community directly linked to tapestry activities in Aubusson-Felletin motivates the implementation of other actors from luxury industries, artistic professions, creation and textile printing.

The textile art/weaved art dimension in Aubusson also includes mechanical tapestry as well, claimed by many architects and decorators, but also needlework tapestries (or stitched tapestry, on canvas), Saracen embroidery (embroidery developed in Aubusson in the late 19th Century), textile designers studios, workshop producing tufted rugs, wool and felt creations workshops, and exhibitions spaces specialized in textile art/weaved art.

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Discover all the actors of the textile creation network around Aubusson-Felletin in the professionals directory.

The restoration and the study of the old cartons is compulsory to the study of Tapestry production along the centuries.

A tapestry could not have been weaved without the intervention of a cartoon-painter, who drafted the sketch of the piece to be weaved. For a long time considered as mere tools, the painted cartoons take little by little their place in art history. The restoration of old sketches is a way of pushing the work of those specialized artists back to the forefront. The consideration of the tapestry cartoons into the collections is a key point of the production of knowledge regarding tapestry and its know-how. The interpretation phenomenon can be studied for example through the evolution of the work, from the artist’s sketch to the tapestry cartoon, and then to the weaved work.

The cartoon is placed under the warp threads to guide the weaver all along the weaving process, and endures degradations due to its repeated use: pin holes, doodles and weaving indications etc. The old cartoons have sometimes even been cut out to sample an element of the setting or characters, becoming stencils to draw these patterns down to new creations.

In a same way as for the paintings, the preservation and the restoration of old cartoons, often rediscovered at random in Creusois attics, needed the intervention of restoring experts, mostly graduates from art schools and experimented in the field of objects of collection.

The tapestry is destined to last through time and this often needs the intervention of restoration or conservation experts. These stages of a tapestry’s life are without a doubt the less known. Yet, only they can guarantee the preservation of an ancient textile heritage and it is often advised to call out the restorers to take care of more recent works.

The textile's alteration is due to several causes: the humidity and temperature gap, the ultra-violet exposition and an unsuitable lightning, a bad suspension or a bad conditioning of the work, the presence of insects etc. The fiber becomes brittle; shortages can be notified, burnt threads, disappearance of intermediaries (finishing stitching made to repair the weaving interruptions necessary between two different colors), a loss of colors or mildew.

The restorer gives a new lease of life or gives back their whole aesthetically pleasing coherence to hanging tapestries, weaved by hand Aubusson rugs and every type of tapestry and stitched-up rugs (canvas), by cleaning them, reviving their colors, sometimes by re-weaving the damaged parts. Through preventive works of conservation, he is the warrant of the tapestry’s durability.

According to the aspect of the work, the wishes of the owner and the opinion of the restorer, the choice will go towards a full restoration, that is the altered part will be re-weaved in favor of the aesthetically pleasing aspect, or towards the conservation, where only treatments destined to stop the degradations will be conducted, to favor the authenticity and the historical importance of a work.

The restoration workshops in Aubusson offer a high level of expertise in terms of textile handling and conservation. As real laboratories, they work thanks to an experimented staff, with a precise know-how.

The professional center of the Cité internationale de la tapisserie welcomes the National Furniture restoration workshop, one of the two public restoration workshops of tapestries in France (the workshop is available for group visits by appointment).

The task of the weaver is to “wool” the artist’s work. This craftsman combines technical skills (handmade movement of the weaving) and artistic skills, implemented in the “textile translation”, the interpretation through the research of fibers and colors combinations. This “harpist”, as called by Jean Cocteau, juggles both of these two arts to offer a work where material, warmth, contrast, texture and variations play with the imagination and the emotions.

The weaver is the craftsman, who carries out the weaving on a loom. The French name “lissier” (or “licier”) comes from the term “lisse” or “lice” (heddle in English) which designates a loop of cotton twine fixed to a warp thread to link it to a “treadle” (pedal) activated by foot to separate the even- and odd-numbered threads of the warp, which allows the passage of the weft thread through (a tapestry being made through the full covering of the warp by the weft) with the help of a “flute” (low warp bobbin), generally wooden.

On a horizontal low warp loom, the “lissier” (weaver) weaves the future tapestry weft-faced and can check his work only partially (the tapestry is rolled in as the weaver goes along) by placing a mirror between the warp threads and the cartoon guiding the weaving. An Aubusson tapestry then keeps all of its mystery during the whole weaving process. The weaver himself, as the artist, only discovers the work in its whole when they cut the warp threads to “free” the tapestry during the event known as “tombée de métier” (“fall out of the loom”). Only remains the finishing stage with the sewing of the edges and the intermediaries, which are interruptions in the weaving due to the color changes

Parallel to the mastering of the weaving gestures, the weaver must be able to converse with the creator of the model in order to make the best technical propositions and interpret at best the sketch during the conception phase of the cartoon of the future woven work. The artist suggests, by way of sketches, his own creations, in very diverse formats. From the sketch, the weaver does weaving attempts; he carries out researches about the colors, the material etc. and makes propositions of interpretation to the artist. Primary drawings on scale with the tapestry are made next to obtain the “cartoon”, a left/right reversed reproduction of the sketch (for the work on the inside of the tapestry) which will help the weaver to find his way throughout the weaving process.

If wool and silk remain the preferred materials of the tapestry, any method and material experimentations are worth considering nowadays. The only necessity is the fact that those materials must remain “weaveable” (metallic stained-glass window tapestry, fiber-optic…)

Beyond the choice of colors and materials, the tapestry-craftsman can intercede with the weaving variations, transposing and interpreting the artist’s intention. Contrary to the mechanical weaving, the manual one on a low warp loom allows an infinite number of colors and allows the weaver to adjust his movements permanently. Thus, the technique of the Aubusson tapestry can produce a huge diversity from effects and textures within a single production.

THE ARTIST/WEAVER DUO: A VERY AUBUSSON-LIKE TRADITION

The relationship, typical to Aubusson, between the artist who is the conceiver of the model to be weaved, and the weaver-interpreter, is the guarantee of a high-quality production. Aubusson has always been a place of dialogue between the art of movement and the most contemporary creations. The tapestries are a four-hand work, with two signatures, product of the collaboration between a weaver-craftsman and a creator, whether he is a painter, plastic artist, designer, architect or decorator.

“Everything is a question of fair relationships and honesty; not a conceited competition, but rather a mutual respect for the best profit of a common work. So were the collaborations between the Tabard workshops and Mathieu Matégot, the Goubely workshops with Mario Prassinos and Michel Tourlière, the Legoueix one with Louis-Marie Julien, the Picaud workshops with Emile Gilioli (amongst others)”, Jean Lurçat

The textile interpretation labor of the artist’s work is the expression of the weaver’s know-how, as much through his technique as through his sensibility and his comprehension of the artistic intention. The excellence of a tapestry is made of the success in this relationship between the creator, who expresses himself through his own medium and the weaver, who imagines the weaved writing.

Then, after the 17th Century, the contemporary creation irrigated the productions from Aubusson, wall hanging, furniture and even fashion accessories. The workshops in the region of Aubusson were stimulated thanks to the input of well-known artists, who came to make original sketches weaved. Thus, one can find in the collections the most prestigious signatures back in the days, from Isaac Moillon to Garouste, by way of Picasso, Léger, Cocteau, Vasarely or even Le Corbusier…