An important discovery of French patchwork

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1995 by Janine Bensasson-Janniere

The discovery of a set of patchwork bed hangings still on the bed for which it was made is a rare occurrence.(1) One of the rarest is the set of hangings that is the subject of this article, which was found in the French castle where it was almost certainly made more than 150 years ago. An investigation of the fabrics used, the patterns employed, and the history of the family in which the bed and hangings descended have provided the first in-depth look at nineteenth-century French patchwork. Until now nothing has been published on the subject and no documented examples exist in major public collections.(2)

The bed and hangings (Pl. II) were found a few years ago in a bedroom of a castle in the south of France, in a remote area of the western Pyrenees. The bed was placed perpendicular to the wall facing the door. Typical of the region in which it was found, the bed is of a type known in Spanish as an Olotina, from Olot, the town in Catalonia where the style originated.(3) In the seventeenth century the high, solid headboards of such beds had baroque outlines and the legs were cabriole. But with the beginning of the neoclassical style under Charles IV (r. 1788-1808), lines became straighter and simpler. This example reflects the transitional period at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth: the love of symmetry and straight lines, a taste for contrasting light and dark woods, the use of neoclassical motifs such as urns, and the brass mounts favored on Empire furniture. It is unusual in that the lengthwise members of the frame are hinged in the center for folding, requiring an extra pair of legs to support the heavy rosewood frame.

The crown above the bed was suspended from the twelve-foot ceiling of the castle bedroom. Hanging from the crown were two bed curtains and a festooned lambrequin, attached as they are seen in Plate II. In addition, a large panel of matching patchwork was fixed to the wall behind the bed curtains and went from the ceiling to the bed. A second lambrequin was hung on the wall above the window, and another piece was stored in the room.(4) Upon careful examination, Xavier Petitcol, a noted French expert on French printed cottons,(5) determined that the hangings were made for the bed but they were not arranged as they had been originally. The lambrequins are in panels separated by braids, which would normally cover angles, not a round crown or a flat surface such as a wall. Originally they would have been hooked together and attached to a half-canopy fixed to the wall or ceiling (see Pl. III).(6) Presumably the hangings were adapted to the crown (which also dates from the early nineteenth century) by a later member of the family.

The patchwork set was probably pieced a decade or so after the bed was made. As is often the case, the pieces are lined but unquilted. They are pieced in the English paper-template manner, in which expensive fabrics were basted to pieces of paper cut into geometric shapes (the most popular being the hexagon) and then joined using an overhand stitch. The pattern of hexagonal "cells" is often referred to as mosaic, hexagon patchwork, or honeycomb.(7)

Most of the cells in the hangings are made up of a ring of eighteen patterned hexagons, surrounding a ring of twelve white hexagons, which in turn encircles a central "rosette." This rosette is usually comprised of six hexagons surrounding a center one, but sometimes it consists of a single piece of patterned fabric. In some instances, the entire cell is made up of a single piece of patterned fabric (see Pl. I for all the variations). The most unusual aspect of this set is its use of monochromatic printed cottons with scenic designs including human figures, called toiles a personnages in French and widely known as toiles de Jouy.(8) These expensive furnishing fabrics were produced in smaller quantities than the small-print fabrics made for clothing that are most often used in patchwork.(9)

All the toiles a personnages are French.(10) The pieces are cut from thirty-three cottons representing twenty-seven separate patterns, all of which date from about 1795 to 1830. Nineteen of the cottons (representing fourteen patterns) are from Christophe Philippe Oberkampf's factory at Jouy-en-Josas and most of these were designed by Oberkampf's most famous artist, Jean Baptiste Huet. While Oberkampf's factory is believed to have produced more than six hundred designs, only eighty-five toiles a personnages have been identified,(11) and thus the set provides an astonishing visual record of approximately one-sixth of the firms known designs with human figures. The remaining toiles a personnages were produced in factories in or near Nantes, Rouen, and Alsace. Together they form a sort of tribute to the golden age of French printed cottons with human figures, particularly those made at Jouy. The chart on pages 828-829 identifies the toiles a personnages used in the hangings and provides relevant information about each one.