FRANCE, LATE 18TH CENTURY

This Louis XVI carpet was made at the privately owned Aubusson workshop in south-central France soon after they began weaving floor carpets in a tapestry flat-weave technique. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, the majority of carpets woven in France were hand-knotted at the royal Savonnerie workshop and were intended solely for royal and noble households (see lot 315). Around the late 1760's, wall tapestry weavers at Aubusson began translating designs from the more laborious, expensive hand-knotted Savonnerie carpets into decorative flat-woven floor coverings available to the general public. As the Aubusson workshops had been weaving wall tapestries since the sixteenth century, this was an easy task. The subdued coloring and classic proportions of the present lot recall the neoclassical Louis XIV period.