The starting point for this Tolkien wall hanging is a collection of original watercolours and drawings made by the famous author, kept at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and most of which do not measure more than 20 cm on any edge. It takes every bit of Aubusson expertise to successfully transpose these small formats into a woven work of several metres square, while honouring the original works. Our pledge: to create a wall-hanging in the spirit of the time when the illustrations were created.

The first stage consists of establishing the final formats of each tapestry, their technical blueprints and the range of wool colours used, with the aim of creating a harmonious wall-hanging while also honouring the original works.

The next stage is creating the ‘tapestry cartoons’ (painted plaster-board models) scaled to the real size of the future tapestries and that serve as a guide to the hand weavers during weaving. Bruno Ythier, curator if the Cité internationale de la tapisserie, gives an overview of this transposing technique: “It is Aubusson know-how that dates back to more than five hundred years ago. It is the work of the cartoon painter, who transposes the work. And it is not just a case of enlarging the work as the weavers point out with this anecdote: ‘You start with a tiny rose on the picture, and if you thoughtlessly enlarge it, you end up with a cabbage.’ The enlarged illustration needs to be reworked bit by bit to restore the spirit of the original. A whole range of technical parameters need to be taken into account, especially the properties of the wool itself. Wool absorbs light, which implies that colours must be as saturated as possible when the wool is dyed to obtain colours that are as vibrant in the woven fabric as in the original works.”

Once each illustration has been digitalised in high resolution, and with a view to creating enlarged versions, a weaving committee comprising cartoon painter Delphine Mangeret, who will be transposing all the works onto the cartoons, the curator of the Cité de la tapisserie and the head weaver, René Duché, was created in Spring 2017 to think about all the production constraints imposed on the weavers working on the project. The weaving workshops will be selected after submitting samples of work.

The first cartoon, which sets the tone for entire wall hanging, was prepared by cartoon painter Delphine Mangeret. This piece was chosen as the graphic standard for the wall hanging as a whole because of its very tapestry-like nature and its similarities with works created within the National School of Decorative Art in Aubusson in the 1930s. The weaving committee was inspired to opt for a return to past traditions promoted by the School at that time through bold colours and a very specific technical draft influenced by 15th and 16th century tapestry work, and rarely in use today.

The cartoon of the Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves illustration will be guiding the first woven work in autumn 2017, after a call for tenders launched among the weaving workshops in the Aubusson-Felletin area. The workshop in charge of the weaving will be designated in mid-November 2017 and will be creating the tapestry work in the Cité’s workshop where an eight-metre-long loom is made available to weavers for large-scale orders. This workshop will be open to visitors four times a week.

Discover the weaving preparation:

This project came to light after much thought on the form a large tapestry wall-hanging with a literary narrative would take today. The name of J.R.R. Tolkien quickly came to the fore as author of one of the greatest literary sagas of the 20th century.

The project is structured around four series, each linked to different works by the author: Letters from Father Christmas (a collection of letters written and illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien for his children between 1920 and 1942), The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and finally, The Silmarillion (a work published posthumously in 1977 by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien), which traces the first Ages of Middle-earth – the setting for his novels. 13 mural tapestries will be created. The fourteenth piece, the Numenorean Carpet, is a woven floor-covering of about 130 square metres. This will take months of meticulous work in the French tapestry-crafting manufactures and workshops of Aubusson and the Creuse that specialise in the very same Aubusson tapestry techniques recognised by UNESCO, and added to the lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009..

Such a large project showcasing this major aspect of the author’s work has never been seen before. Using Aubusson tapestry craftsmanship to weave this series of 14 pieces based on the illustrative works of J.R.R. Tolkien is very innovative in the world of tapestry today. It creates a link to the great narrative wall-hangings (series of tapestries illustrating the different parts of a story) of the 17th and 18th centuries that made reference to important literary texts (Homer’s Odyssey, or Renaud and Armide taken from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, etc.). This direct link to literature was lost in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today, in the 21st century, this project of weaving the illustrative works of J.R.R. Tolkien has an added originality: it benefits from illustrations created by the author of the literary works himself, which is a first in the history of great narrative wall hangings.

Every due respect will be given to the original works as the Cité de la tapisserie embarks on this heritage-based adventure of combining Aubusson tapestry, a major decorative art, with the illustrative works of J.R.R. Tolkien that are so suited to becoming history-in-the-making tapestries, embedded as they are in a ‘present-day mythology’. The sheer monumentality of this woven wall-hanging project will invite viewers to immerse themselves in the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien as never before. In the wake of Charles Le Brun’s L’Histoire d’Alexandre (The History of Alexander) or Isaac Moillon’s L’Odyssée d’Ulysse (Ulysses’ Odyssey), it is now the illustrative and narrative universe of J.R.R. Tolkien that will live on through the ages alongside his books.

The fantasy world of J. R. R. Tolkien to be woven in Aubusson tapestry: a project emerged from the will of creating a new tapestry wall-hanging with a literary narrative.

Christopher Tolkien, the son of The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, has put a lot of work and effort throughout his life into honouring and promoting his father’s monumental work in all its richness, and as literary executor, he notably edited and published the Silmarillion manuscript.

In 2010, the Scientific and Cultural Project for the museum at the heart of the nascent Cité internationale de la tapisserie was drafted by the curator, and he came up with the idea for The Nave of Tapestries. The question arose of what it would be like to create a 20th century wall hanging based on a renowned literary work, as was the custom in the 16th or 17th century. J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories seemed an obvious choice for this. A young apprentice weaver, Thomas Mondon, began drafting a document listing all the different illustrators of Tolkien’s written works, including the author himself. In 2012, an interview with Christopher Tolkien in the French newspaper Le Monde provided the team from the Cité de la tapisserie with a breakthrough: the project should honour the memory and illustrative works of J.R.R. Tolkien himself.

At the end of 2012, the director of the Cité internationale de la tapisserie, Emmanuel Gérard, contacted Dominique Bourgois, publisher of the French version of The Lord of the Rings (Christian Bourgois publishing house) in France, and emphasised the relevance of weaving the illustrative works of J.R.R. Tolkien that accompanied his novels, in the Aubusson tapestry tradition. The sheer size of the work would invite visitors to immerse themselves in the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien as never before. The publisher was taken with this idea, as was most of the Tolkien family subsequently.

At the end of 2013, Christopher and Baillie Tolkien received the Cité’s director, Emmanual Gérard, and curator, Bruno Ythier, at their house in Haute-Provence. They said that aside from an exhibition of Tolkien’s original pictures by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, it was the first time that anyone had expressed a wish to showcase the illustrative work of their father and father-in-law. They asserted that in their eyes, the idea of using tapestry to present this illustrative work was perfect. 14 drawings and watercolours by J.R.R. Tolkien were jointly selected by the Tolkien family and the Cité de la tapisserie as subjects for tapestries or carpets. This then led to negotiations with the Tolkien Estate’s lawyer, Cathleen Blackburn. At the end of 2016, this resulted in an agreement signed by Christopher Tolkien for the Tolkien Estate, and French senator Jean-Jacques Lozach for the Cité internationale de la tapisserie.

Presentation of the project:

Timeline for the "Aubusson weaves Tolkien" project:

- End of 2013: meeting with Christopher and Baillie Tolkien, start of negotiations;

- End of 2016: agreement signed with the Tolkien Estate;

- 25 January 2017: official launch of the project and start of the digitisation process for the 14 original works at the Bodleian Library in Oxford;

- Spring of 2017: the weaving committee establishes the technical aspects (colour sampling, size of tapestries, selection of weaving thickness, etc.), work is carried out on the first tapestry cartoon (real-size painted paper-board model);

- Summer 2017: presentation of the project and the first cartoon in a reconstructed cartoon-making workshop;

- Autumn 2017: weaving starts and progress can be followed at the Cité de la tapisserie;

- Start of spring 2018: projected date for the first ‘tombée de métier’ (important moment when the tapestry is cut from the loom);

- 2021: weaving comes to an end, presentation of the entire tapestry work.

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Comme en témoigne encore aujourd’hui le patrimoine architectural subsistant, les Sallandrouze font partie des familles les plus illustres dans l’industrie des tapis, de la moquette et de la tapisserie à Aubusson. Toutefois, nous devons distinguer les deux branches de la famille connue sous le nom des Sallandrouze : d’une part, les Sallandrouze de Lamornaix, actifs du début du XIX^e siècle jusqu’aux années 1870, et d’autre part les Sallandrouze Lemoullec, dont l’activité s’exerce du milieu du XIX^e siècle jusqu’aux années 1990.

Sallandrouze de Lamornaix

Jean Sallandrouze de Lamornaix est le premier membre de la famille à connaître un succès conséquent dans l’industrie du tapis et de la tapisserie. Ainsi, dès la première exposition nationale des produits de l’industrie à Paris en 1802, l’entreprise Rogier et Sallandrouze, née de l’association entre Jean Sallandrouze de Lamornaix et le maire d’Aubusson Guillaume Rogier, est récompensée. En plus de sa manufacture alors située sur l’actuel emplacement de la manufacture Saint-Jean à Aubusson, Jean Sallandrouze de Lamornaix ouvre une manufacture de tapis velours dans le quartier du Marais, à Paris. Son fils, Charles Sallandrouze de Lamornaix, prend ensuite la succession de l’entreprise à partir de 1826 et devient un industriel important au XIX^e siècle. En parallèle des ateliers à Aubusson, il acquiert l’hôtel Montholon à Paris pour y installer une boutique dans le nouveau quartier à la mode des Grands Boulevards. Charles Sallandrouze de Lamornaix est aussi impliqué dans la politique et est élu conseiller général de la Creuse à partir de 1841, député à plusieurs reprises à partir de 1846, et enfin maire d’Aubusson. Il publie également plusieurs ouvrages dont les Considérations sur la législation des brevets d’invention, en 1829. Charles Sallandrouze de Lamornaix participe activement aux expositions universelles du XIX^e siècle. À cet effet, en 1851 à Londres, il est commissaire général et, à ce titre, responsable de la direction française de l’exposition par délégation. En 1855, il est vice-président du jury à l’exposition universelle parisienne.

À la mort de Charles Sallandrouze de Lamornaix, le fils du fabricant, Octave Sallandrouze de Lamornaix prend la succession de l’entreprise. Ses tapis et tapisseries rencontrent également un vif succès à l’exposition universelle de 1867. Après la défaite de la France face à la Prusse en 1870, dans un contexte de crise économique, l’usine Sallandrouze de Lamornaix ferme en 1872. Ses bâtiments sont rachetés par la famille Hamot, qui y développe une prestigieuse manufacture de tapis et tapisseries qui deviendra plus tard la Manufacture Saint-Jean.

Sallandrouze Lemoullec

Dans la branche cadette de la famille des Sallandrouze, nous trouvons le cousin de Charles Sallandrouze de Lamornaix, Alexis Sallandrouze. Celui-ci est connu pour la célèbre Tapisserie à l’éléphant, actuellement conservée au musée du Louvre. Un autre cousin de Charles Sallandrouze de Lamornaix, Jean-Jacques Sallandrouze Lemoullec, connaît un succès retentissant dans l’entreprise qu’il avait créée avec Charles Sallandrouze. Ils remportent ainsi des médailles d’argent aux expositions universelles de 1855 et de 1867 sous le nom de Sallandrouze Jean-Jacques et Charles, puis de Jean-Jacques Sallandrouze père et fils. Ils industrialisent la production de tapis mécaniques et de moquettes, grâce à l’installation de métiers à vapeur alimentés par l’eau de la Creuse. Les ateliers de production, installés dans un premier temps à Felletin, sont déplacés à Aubusson. L’entreprise qui prend ensuite le nom de Sallandrouze frères, remporte de grandes médailles aux expositions universelles de 1878 et de 1889. Elle fait construire un imposant bâtiment en L pour abriter les moulins hydrauliques Mirabeau utilisés pour la filature à Felletin. Sallandrouze frères localisent ensuite la totalité de leur production à Aubusson, dans la nouvelle usine construite en 1885 dans le quartier Saint-Jean. L’entreprise, qui emploie 800 ouvriers à la fin du XIX^e siècle, produit des tapis et des moquettes uniquement sur des métiers mécaniques.

Au XX^e siècle, l’usine est alimentée par l’énergie provenant de la centrale hydro-électrique de la Croix Blanche et du barrage des Combes*. À partir des années 1920, d’exceptionnels sheds en béton à toitures courbes sont construits par la société fondée par l’ingénieur béton armé François Hennebique, véritable précurseur de l’architecture béton. L’entreprise est ensuite partiellement détruite pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en juillet 1944, avant d’être reconstruite dans une architecture en sheds également. L’entreprise Sallandrouze frères cesse son activité dans les années 1990 et devient Manufacture Royale du Parc. Les bâtiments de l’usine sont entièrement détruits et rasés en 2014. Le château Sallandrouze, transformé pendant quelques années en hôtel de luxe, le château Saint-Jean qui abrite actuellement la maison de retraite d’Aubusson et la villa Saint-Jean, dans laquelle sont installés des locaux d’EDF-GDF, témoignent encore aujourd’hui de la richesse et de l’importance de la famille Sallandrouze dans la ville d’Aubusson aux XIX^e et XX^e siècles.

L’entreprise Manufacture Royale du Parc continue pour sa part son activité dans des locaux situés dans le quartier de la Beauze et produit des tapis et moquettes sur mesure pour les établissements hôteliers les plus luxueux, les compagnies de transports aériens et ferrovières.

D’après Juliette Ronsin

* L’exposition « Énergie et bâtisseurs », organisée par l’association Les Maçons de la Creuse, célèbre le centenaire de la construction du barrage des Combes, à Felletin, du 14 juillet au 30 septembre 2017. Pour en savoir plus, découvrez le site de l’association Les Maçons de la Creuse.