Sage green Splendeur at Compiègne

all photos Le style et la matière/St Tyl

The Salle de Conseil at the château de Compiègne has only a few elements in it - 

but oh, 

what there is is a precious sight.

Compiègne was one of the only châteaux, along with Versailles and Fontainebleau, where the king held Council. The tapestry behind the bureau shows the Passage of the Rhine by Louis XIV.

Velvet bedecked with passementeries and a lampas carefully cut-out and applied  

to form a rolling leafy border.

all photos Le style et la matière/St Tyl

At the window,

the here uncut border of lampas with its tawny ground weave sets off the oak leaf pattern.The leaves detach themselves from the ground with finely woven effect of cast shadows.

3 Beds for Empress Eugenie

Jean Baptiste Fortuné de Fournier
Eugénie's bedchamber at the chateau of St Coud

Empress Eugénie knew what she liked.

 In matters of foreign policy she had strong opinions and she often held sway, and in dress and decoration, 

she always had her way. 

Eugénie wearing powder and panier as Marie-Antoinette
Winterhalter

The wife of  Napoleon III identified with Marie-Antoinette.  

To Marie-Antoinette's, l'autrichienne,  she answered to another echoing sobriquet , l'espagnol.

When you are exploring the style Napoleon III, look closer, you may be looking at the style Louis XVI-Impératrice. The Garde-Meuble and even the Louvre contained the best examples of Louis XVI furnishings in Empress' day and she determined she would have them for her personal use. Sometimes she had made admirable copies of these pieces with the talent of perfectionist cabinet maker, Georges Grohé. With the addition of gold leaf and bronze she hoped to make these creations surpass the originals. Philippe Jullian gently mocked when he said  "as a good Spaniard, she liked that which glittered. "

The bed shown in the previous post where I spoke of the exhibit Folie Textile is a pure Louis XVI-Impératrice  creation. It was made for the Palais de l'Elysée 146 years ago,but has lived its life at the Palais de Compiègne for 104 years. The Empress intended this bed to welcome Empress Elisabeth of Austria when she accompanied her husband Franz-Joseph on his visit to the 1867 World's Fair. Laure Chabanne's article in the exhibit catalogue states that the white and gold Louis XVI style bed was similar to two others already created for her own use at the chateau of St Cloud in 1855 and of the Tuileries in 1853. The thrice repeated style seems to have been a special way to honor Elisabeth to whom she was very close.

 Having just undergone a 6 year restoration, the bed in all its Second Empire splendor is a key piece at the exhibit. 200 meters of emerald silk damask were woven by Georges Lemanach (which recently became part of the Pierre Frey group) to match the original ; 132 meters of fringe and 78 ornaments of passementerie - tiebacks, tassels, braid - were re-created by Declerq Passementier.

The headboard and the inside of the canopy retain the original 19th century tufting of a damask by Maison Mathevon et Bouvard, Lyon which has been restored, not reproduced and which accounts for the different color. 

The Empress Sissy as it turned out did not accompany her husband to Paris on that occasion. The bed was never used, but stored until it was moved to the palais of Compiègne to join the imperial apartments and later the museum of the Second Empire.  It remains as a strong reminder of Eugénie's taste and impressive example of the textile mania of the day.

all photos Musées et domaine nationaux du Palais de Compiègne © RMN –Grand Palais (domaine de Compiègne) / Christophe Chavan

Folie Textile: the magnificent madness of the French Second Empire

Empress Eugénie's bed originally from the Palais de l'Elysée 1867
today at the palais de Compiègne
original damask by Maison Mathevon et Bouvard, Lyon
photo:  RMN-GP/Christophe Chavanli

What would the Second Empire be without its swags, valances and tufting? 

Alfred Stevens La Robe Jaune

Or the Second Empire woman, without her crinolines and the double-digit yardages of fabric necessary for her dresses? 

grand magasin second empire source La soie en occident

The Second Empire in France corresponds to the dates of Napoleon III from 1850-1868, but the style continues on until 1890, roughly corresponding to the Victorian period in England. The wonderful exhibit entitled Folie Textile, reminds us not only of the shapes and colors of the day, but that a fever raged for nearly half a century when textiles were consumed without moderation for dress and decoration.

salon Princess Mathilde Saint Gratien by Charles Giraud
image souce: La Tribune de l'Art

Textiles had been forever a symbol of opulence among the aristocracy and when the industrial revolution made them more widely accessible than ever before, a craze broke out in society close to madness. This exuberant trend spread to simpler bourgeois interiors, the perfecting of Jacquard looms, printing cylinders, and sewing machines all playing a role in spreading the joyous contagion.

Eugénie and her dames d'honneur by Winterhalter

After a period of upheaval and economizing, this was an era of seemingly lighthearted  fêtes into which was born capitalism and consumerism. Mail order catalogues circulated in abundance and Au Bon Marché, the first of the grands magasins or department stores, opened in 1852 making material desires easier to satisfy.  The Empress Eugénie and her dames d'honneur set a festive tone by displaying the latest luxury creations of the textile industry with a dizzying array of gowns, changed several times a day.

silk by Lamy et Giraud,design by Beuchot 1867
manufacture Prelle

Néo-Renaissance silk lampas known as Tête de Mélusine

It's as if an immense hunger seized society, commanding it to catch up on all the bygone days when it craved  cloths and other objects of which  it had been deprived. So who could blame them? They fed their fever with articles imitating the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Rococo, Louis XVI - Turqueries, Chinoiseries and designs from other exotic lands. Historicizing and eclectic, they devoured the silks and chintzes, velvets and brocatelles that had the fresh savor of the Second Empire. 

Grand Frères Lyon, 1866
Tassinari et Chatel, Paris

Satin curtain with a brocaded Chinese-inspired border from the hotel of the Marquise de Paiva.

cotton block print Alsace 1866, Mulhouse musée de l'Impression sur étoffes 

Print imitating embroidery to make up an Indian jeweled flower design. Note the shadows that give 3-D quality. Printed fabrics and wallpaper had a jollytime with trompe l'oeil.

Alsace 1868, Mulhouse musée de l'Impression sur étoffes 

Cotton print with fantasy 'Arabic' calligraphy. It was the spirit that counted not a true inscription.

Alsace 1866
Palais de Compiènge

 Fabrics imitating fabrics. Many prints imitated weaves and moiré undulations as in this glazed percale perse that is part of bed hanging on display. A naturalistic depiction of flowers and botanicals was in vogue. This was the the period that gave birth to the 'jardin d'hiver'.

Printed fabrics are well represented in the period and mostly considered suitable for bedrooms whereas the salon would have been more richly outfitted with brocades and velvet. A new, less expensive alternative to velvet was reps, a fabric with transverse ribs made of silk or cotton and wool that could be woven or printed to look like tapestry.  

Raymond Ronze 1867 Lyon
Lyon, musée des Tissus

A very subtle and beautiful 'painted' brocatelle made of silk and linen. 

Its warp was printed before weaving giving the flowers more sculptural relief with watercolor-like shading. 

One of my favorites in the exhibit.

portrait Napoleon III by Maison Furnion, design Auguste Malpertuy, 1855
Lyon, musée des Tissus

The Emperor's directives, a new ease of production and an undeniable prosperity also made it possible to make textile creations of outstanding prowess. The finely sculpted effect of this cut velvet on a satin ground are astounding had me thinking of metal repoussé. It was presented as velours broderie at the World Exposition of 1855.

Maison Bérard, Poncet & cie Lyon  1861
Lyon, musée des Tissus

This silk velvet panel possibly created for Queen Victoria has an immense delicacy of rendering and fine transparent effects rarely seen in velvet. It was presented at the World's Exposition of 1862.

passementrie
palais de Compiègne

And where would we be without passementrie ? Yes, it's the icing on the cake.

Lovely, superfluous, daring.

Philippe Jullian said of the Second Empire,

Le mobilier Second Empire est provocant dans ces ornements, compliqué dans ses formes; les amours pullulent, le pastiche semble triompher; il est pourtant très original, peut-être superbe ou ravissant.

Second Empire furniture is challenging in its ornaments, complicated in its shapes; 
putti abound, pastiche seems to triumph, yet it is very original and may be exquisite, 
even touching.

The exhibit site is one hour north of Paris at the Palais de Compiègne.
An excellent catalogue to the exhibit, Folie Textiles, mode et décoration sous le Second Empire is available with thorough illustrations and fascinating texts (French).

Salon des Fleurs Chateau de Compiègne

photo St Tyl

This is the Salon de Fleurs in the Château of Compiègne, formerly a royal and imperial residence. I wandered these rooms over the week-end when I went to see the exhibit Folie Textile, a wonderful show that explores the exuberant production and use of textiles at the time of Napoleon III, 1848-1871. That exhibit and some important restoration work in historic sites is making the 19th century weigh heavily in decorative world's time line these days, provoking a certain rediscovery of  decorative arts of the mid to late part of the century. More on that soon, but for today...

The Salon des Fleurs was a game room for Empress Josephine - specialty tables are scattered for playing  trictrac, quadrille, bouillotte. 

(Trictrac is backgammon. Does anyone know the names of these other games in English?)

source: Napoleon III

An important thing to remember is that in the 19th century very often fabrics were used that were woven for a prior reign (new olds) and older decors were sometimes kept by the various regimes that succeeded each other - Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III.  The reasons: availability, economy, emulation.

During the Second Empire of Napoleon III, the salon was used as a bed chamber for the Imperial Prince  The young prince scratched the date 4 décembre 1868 into the marble table 

and

Bourdelin, (c) RMN

played his games in another well-dressed room. 

photo St Tyl

The Salon des Fleurs takes its name from its decoration. The oil panels painted in 1809 and 1814 

by Dubois were  based on the work of Pierre-Joseph Redouté.

photo St Tyl

The armchairs and settees by Jacob-Desmalter are covered in Gobelins tapestry.The 18th century floral design by Louis Tessier of was chosen by the Empress Josephine and delivered in 1809 - once again,  

an example of  the blending of stylistic frontiers. 

photo St Tyl

detail of the canapé

The ground of the tapestry is a fair lilac shade with a band 

of crisp, violet grosgrain to give  the finishing touch. 

These tones will deepen in textile design as the century progresses even to deep purple and become very popular with the advent of color-fast aniline dyes.

photo St Tyl

A tender, watercolor quality still comes through in this 1st Empire /early 18th century tapestry.

 château de Compiègne