Aubusson tapestry folding screen, 18th century

Aubusson tapestry screen, 18th century.
Exhibits wear consistent with age and use.
Measurements: 274 x 200 cm.

Aubusson tapestry folding screen with four leaves. The city of Aubusson agglutinated numerous tapestry workshops, which were created by Flemish weavers settled in the area at the end of the 16th century. They had a rudimentary operation, compared to the Royal Gobelins Manufacture: they had no painters, no dyers, and no commercial structure, so their tapestries were sold in inns, to a lower class private clientele, mainly provincial aristocrats. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Aubusson workshops specialized in vegetable tapestries (with eminently floral decoration), but the situation changed radically when, in the mid-seventeenth century, this center was reorganized by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of Louis XIV, with the aim of converting these workshops into royal manufactories. He then subjected the Aubusson and Felletin workshops to a guild regulation and, in exchange, promised to provide them with a painter and a dyer. This promise, however, did not become effective until the 18th century, a turning point for the workshops of La Marche, which saw a considerable increase in the quality of their tapestries as they were able to count on a painter dedicated to making cartoons and a dyer who produced dyes of a higher quality than those used until then. Until the 18th century, the tapestries of La Marche were characterized by their thick density (50-60 threads per square decimeter), poor quality wool, sometimes very poorly refined, limited colors with a predominance of earthy and green (almost never red, the most expensive and most complicated color to produce), poor drawing, with few figures, hence the predominance of vegetable tapestries, and little silk, eminently using wool. On the other hand, the Aubusson tapestries of the 18th century are already of a much higher quality, thanks to the important transformations undergone by these workshops. Louis XIV gave the workshops of La Marche the character of a royal manufacture, and at the beginning of the 18th century, many Protestant weavers arrived in France as a result of the war with Spain and the renewal of the Edict of Nantes. In the thirties, Colbert's promise was fulfilled; in 1732 Jean Joseph Dumons was appointed painter of the manufacture, and he dedicated himself to making the first cartons made specifically for these workshops. He also retouched the cartons when they deteriorated, and gave drawing lessons to the operators of the workshops (in 1742 a small drawing school was created in Aubusson).