Search Results

[Fr. point d’Alençon]

Type of lace produced in France. In 1675 a group of 30 Venetian lacemakers was settled in the Norman town of Alençon by Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Louis XIV’s minister of finance). The Venetians instructed local needlewomen in point de Venise, but by the 1690s the distinctive local style known as point d’Alençon had emerged (see alsoLace §2, (iii), §2(iii)). Needlewomen adopted the net ground technique, and invented a series of new stitches.

Lace production was halted at the Revolution because of its association with the ancien régime, but revived under Napoleon (reg 1804–14) and again under the Second Empire. Lace is still produced in Alençon, supported by the Atelier National du Point d’Alençon founded in 1976, and there are good collections of Alençon lace in the Musée de la Dentelle au Point d’Alençon and the Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle.

The term point d’Alençon now denotes a style as well as a place of origin. The style is characterized by a uniform mesh (called the ...

Portuguese centre of carpet production; also the name applied to carpets made elsewhere in the same tradition. Arraiolos carpets are embroidered with strands of thick wool, or more rarely silk, on linen, jute or hemp canvas, using a large-eyed needle and a long-armed cross stitch, which gives the effect of braiding. The reverse side of the carpet shows no trace of finishing off and appears to be hatched. The pattern is drawn on squared paper, and then the main points of reference are marked on the canvas by counting the threads. The border and all the motifs are first outlined and then filled; the background is embroidered last. The carpet is finished with a continuous plain or polychrome edging of looped or cut fringe. In the days when natural dyes were used, the colours were predominantly red, blue and yellow, obtained from brazil-wood, indigo, dyer’s weed or spurge respectively. Originally the carpets were used to cover the floor of the hall or bedroom in noble houses and were surrounded by a strip of polished wooden floor....

English town in Devon, situated on the River Axe, known as a centre of carpet production from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th. In 1755 Thomas Whitty (d 1792), a weaver from Axminster, visited Pierre Parisot’s carpet workshop in Fulham, London. An apprentice showed him the workshop, and on his return to Axminster Whitty built a large vertical loom, taught his daughters to tie the symmetrical or Ghiordes knot (see Carpet, §I, 1) and began to produce carpets. In 1757 he submitted a carpet measuring 4.9×3.8 m to the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded a joint prize with Thomas Moore (c. 1700–1788; see Carpet, §II, 2, (iii)) of Chiswell Street, London. Whitty valued his carpet at £15 and the Society ruled it the best carpet in proportion to its price. In 1758 he was asked to submit three carpets and shared the prize with ...

English family of merchants, bankers, politicians, collectors and patrons. John Baring (1697–1748) came from a Lutheran family in Bremen and settled in Exeter, Devon, in 1717. The success of his clothmaking business enabled him to acquire a large house, Larkbeare, and landed estate on the outskirts of the city. His portrait was painted by William Hoare (c. 1740s) and that of his wife, Elizabeth Baring (1702–66), by Gainsborough (c. 1750s; both London, Barings PLC). John Baring’s son Sir Francis Baring, created 1st Baronet in 1793, was a merchant and financier and founder in 1762 of Baring Brothers in London, which became Baring Brothers & Co. Ltd. Francis had three sons who were partners in the firm: Sir Thomas Baring (i), 2nd Baronet, Alexander Baring, created 1st Baron Ashburton in 1835, and Henry Baring (1776–1848). Thomas Baring (i)’s sons included Francis Baring, 1st Lord Northbrook (...

(bapt March 9, 1734; d Madrid, Aug 4, 1795).

Spanish painter and tapestry designer. In 1758 he won first prize in painting and a scholarship to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando, Madrid, with his picture the Tyranny of Geryon (1758; Madrid, Real Acad. S Fernando Mus.). There he studied under António González Velázquez. In 1759 he returned to Saragossa and married Sebastiana Merklein, the daughter of his former teacher. In 1763 Bayeu went back to Madrid where he was invited by Mengs to work under his direction in the Palacio Real, mainly as a painter of frescoes. There he began work on one of his most important early royal commissions, Olympus: The Fall of the Giants (1764), a ceiling fresco in one of the public chambers of the Prince of the Asturias (in situ). The quality of the highly finished sketch for this (Madrid, Prado), with its delicate impasto and loose brushwork, indicates Bayeu’s early talent. In ...

(b Saragossa, May 23, 1746; d Aranjuez, March 2, 1793).

Spanish painter, tapestry designer and printmaker, brother of Francisco Bayeu. He was neither as talented nor as eminent as Francisco Bayeu, but he held several minor posts and was an important figure on the artistic scene in Madrid. From 1764 he studied in Madrid at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando, where in 1766 he won first prize for painting. He alternated his studies with working for Anton Raphael Mengs and assisting Francisco with the frescoes at the Palacio Real. From 1765 he made cartoons for the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara, first following Francisco’s sketches under his brother’s direction, later using his own compositions. These designs depict popular subjects in the Madrid tradition, but his figures reveal a pronounced academic quality and show a sense of gravity that sets them apart from the more mannered Rococo gestures of contemporary tapestry designers; this is apparent in 13 sketches for tapestry (after ...

(b St Pierre de Vaise, Lyon, May 17, 1754; d Lyon, Oct 24, 1843).

French painter, teacher and designer. According to his uncorroborated 19th-century biographer J. Gaubin, he was intended for holy orders and began studying flower painting as a novice (Rev. Lyon., i, 1856). Certainly he studied drawing under the sculptor Antoine-Michel Perrache (1726–79) and worked for Lyon’s silk industry as a textile designer, visiting Paris annually, ostensibly to keep abreast of the latest fashions. He first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1791 and settled in Paris in about 1794, probably as a consequence of the catastrophic siege and destruction of Lyon by revolutionary forces the previous year. Initially he eked out a precarious living decorating snuff-boxes and painting miniatures, supported by friends such as Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, the poetess, and the miniature painter Jean-Baptiste Augustin, to whom Berjon dedicated The Gift (1797; Lyon, Mus. B.-A.). He contributed to seven Paris Salons between 1796 and 1819 and again in ...

Type of lace made since the 17th century at Binche, near Brussels and Valenciennes, both of whose laces it resembles. It is a heavy lace with decorative grounds, and was used for bedspreads and as a costume trimming. The name has since become the generic term for the type of lace once made at Binche....

Style of silk woven in Europe, especially Italy, France and England, in the late 17th century and early 18th. The bizarre style had its origins in the rich mix of images provided by the goods imported into Europe from the Near and Far East by the Levant Company and the East India companies of France, Holland and England. An insatiable market for novelty and richness had been established at the courts of Louis XIV and Charles II, and other monarchs who followed their lead. The silks woven to satisfy that demand began to appear in the late 1680s; chinoiseries and vegetable forms derived from Indian textiles began to be mixed with European floral sprigs. By the mid-1690s, the plant forms, although still small, were becoming more angular and elongated, with an increasingly vigorous left-right movement. The patterns, typically asymmetrical, were brocaded with metal threads on damask grounds, which were already patterned with even stranger motifs....

Type of lace produced in northern France. Blonde lace is a floss silk lace of two threads, twisted and formed in hexagonal meshes; early examples are the colour of raw silk, but later ones are sometimes black or white. Blonde laces were first made c. 1745, principally in Bayeux, Caen, Chantilly and Dieppe. The laces are sometimes known as ‘blondes’ (not ‘blonds’) or ‘nankins’; the latter term, a corruption of Nanjing, reflects the Chinese origin of silk....

(b 1754; d 1825).

French painter and designer of textiles and embroideries. He trained with Philippe de Lasalle and went on to become one of the most celebrated designers of textiles and embroidery for Lyon silk manufacturers. His clients included the Empress Josephine, for whom he designed the furniture fabrics at Malmaison (near Paris), and the Empress Marie-Louise, for whom he designed a coronation robe. His work in every medium is chiefly remarkable for its flowers. It is sometimes difficult to attribute work with confidence to Bony or de Lasalle; the silk wallpaper for Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom in Versailles (of which some is now in the Musée Historiques des Tissus in Lyon), for example, could be by either artist....

(b Paris, Sept 29, 1703; d Paris, May 30, 1770).

French painter, draughtsman and etcher. Arguably it was he, more than any other artist, who set his stamp on both the fine arts and the decorative arts of the 18th century. Facilitated by the extraordinary proliferation of engravings, Boucher successfully fed the demand for imitable imagery at a time when most of Europe sought to follow what was done at the French court and in Paris. He did so both as a prolific painter and draughtsman (he claimed to have produced some 10,000 drawings during his career) and through engravings after his works, the commercial potential of which he seems to have been one of the first artists to exploit. He reinvented the genre of the pastoral, creating an imagery of shepherds and shepherdesses as sentimental lovers that was taken up in every medium, from porcelain to toile de Jouy, and that still survives in a debased form. At the same time, his manner of painting introduced the virtuosity and freedom of the sketch into the finished work, promoting painterliness as an end in itself. This approach dominated French painting until the emergence of Neo-classicism, when criticism was heaped on Boucher and his followers. His work never wholly escaped this condemnation, even after the taste for French 18th-century art started to revive in the second half of the 19th century. In his own day, the fact that he worked for both collectors and the market, while retaining the prestige of a history painter, had been both Boucher’s strength and a cause of his decline....

(b 1717; d 1812).

English tapestry-weaver, upholsterer and cabinetmaker. In 1755 he assumed control of the Soho tapestry works owned by his relative William Bradshaw. In 1757 he worked with the tapestry-weaver Paul Saunders (1722–71) to make tapestry and furniture for Holkham Hall, the Norfolk seat of the earls of Leicester; their work (designed to match a set of Brussels tapestry panels) can still be seen in the Green State Bedroom. Bradshaw subsequently supplied furniture to Admiralty House in London (...

(b Cockerham, 1700; d after 1762).

English furniture-maker and tapestry-weaver. He founded a London workshop in 1728, and in 1755 passed control of the workshop to George Smith Bradshaw. He was unusual in his ability to undertake both the joinery and the tapestry upholstery for furniture (e.g. four armchairs. New York, Met.).

Town in Podolia, Ukraine, formerly in Polish territory, known as a centre for weaving in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 18th century the town belonged to the magnate family Potocki, and the art of weaving kilims with floral designs flourished. About 1870 Oskar Potocki founded a large factory to produce wall hangings made of silk interwoven with gold and silver thread. These hangings carried on the Polish tradition of brocade weaving but were made on mechanical looms. They are distinguished by subtle shades of pink, orange and red, with tiny motifs, or are predominantly gold with a beautiful sheen. They were expensive and much prized by connoisseurs. The workshop labels, which give the size of each piece (usually about 1.5×2.5 m), show the Pilawa coat of arms of the Potocki family (a cross with two-and-a-half arms), the name Buczacz and sometimes the initials AP for Artur Potocki, the manager. These were woven in or stitched on a separate piece of fabric. ...

(b Versailles, Sept 23, 1749; d Paris, Apr 30, 1825).

French designer. He was the only son of François Dugourc, controller to the household of the Duc d’Orléans. Little precise information has survived regarding his early years and artistic training. He developed his gift for drawing and design as a pupil of Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin. He is thought to have made a brief trip to Italy (c. 1764–5), where he is believed to have met Johann Joachim Winckelmann, events that seem to have inspired his passion for the ancient world and its art. His first known work is an allegory for the opera house at Versailles, executed in honour of the wedding of the Dauphin in May 1770. In November 1776 he married Marie-Anne Adélaïde Bélanger, elder sister of François-Joseph Bélanger. Together with Bélanger and Georges Jacob, Dugourc worked on the interiors of the château of Bagatelle, as well as for a glittering private clientele that included the ...

Technology influences the physical manifestation of fashion, affecting a garment’s appearance and performance. Throughout history, changes in technology affecting the production of materials and the manufacture of garments and accessories have spurred changes in fashion design. In the 20th and 21st centuries, technology has affected not only the look of fashion, but how the fashion system works.

Much of the relationship between technology and fashion centres on textiles. Looms often determine the size and complexity of textiles. Fabric woven on a simple backstrap loom has inherently smaller widths in reference to the size of the human body, whereas fabric woven on the drawloom can be several feet wide and contain more complex weave structures, which translates into more sophisticated patterning options. The drawloom process (which requires two people—the weaver and a person who ‘draws’ up warps at specific points to create the pattern) was mechanized in the early 19th century with the invention of the jacquard loom and its punch card system. Lyons in France and Spitalfields in England were two of the most technologically advanced silk-weaving centres....

Architectural and decorative arts style that flourished in the USA from shortly after the acknowledgement of independence in the Treaty of Paris (1783) until c. 1820. The term is derived from the period surrounding the creation of the federal constitution in 1787 and was in use in a political sense by that year. Essentially it was a form of Neo-classicism, strongly influenced by manifestations of that style in England and, to a lesser extent, in France; but at times certain more conservative qualities inherited from the previous Colonial period are also present. The inspiration of European, and especially English, Neo-classical architecture was to be expected in a society grounded in that of 18th-century England; but an added impetus was the association often cited at the time between the fledgling American republic and the ancient Roman one.

Although a few indications of European Neo-classical influence are found in the American colonies before the Revolution began in ...