Lot Essay
The black ground of this fragment together with the ribbon-tied floral sprays are typical of Savonnerie carpets produced during the reign of Louis XIII. Carpets generally attributed to this period are typified by dense arrangements of floral sprays, sometimes framed within cartouches, sometimes issuing from baskets, and often, as here, tied with light blue ribbons. An example in the Rothschild Collection (P. Verlet, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor: The Savonnerie, London, 1982, no.1, pp.168-171) shows all these three types of floral sprays. Another carpet now in the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris, has similar floral sprays, either tied with blue ribbons or issuing from baskets which here rest on the head of animals (M. Jarry, The Carpets of the Manufacture de la Savonnerie, Leigh-on-Sea, 1966, fig.8 and p.28). Jarry dates this latter carpet to circa 1660, in other words just before Louis XIV took over personal power from the regency of his mother in 1661
Little is known in detail about the production of carpets in this formative period of the Savonnerie workshops. The picture is further clouded by there having been two royal manufactories, one in the Palais du Louvre, the other at the old soap factory in Chaillot. These were run by two men bitterly opposed to each other, but today nothing is known for sure about the differences between their carpets. Indications are that Dupont at the Louvre produced finer and more varied designs, while Lourdet at the Savonnerie produced somewhat coarser carpets which followed fewer cartoons but which were easier to sell (Verlet, op. cit., p.161). The designs seem to have been based upon florilegia of the period, such as Pierre Vallet's Le Jardin du Roy Très-Chrétien Henri IV, Roy de France et de Navarre of 1608, with a very wide variety of flowers to be found in a single carpet. In the Rothschild carpet Mr Wilfred Blunt identified no less than twenty-six different species without counting different hybrids. Unfortunately the artists who worked up the carpet designs from the printed source material have also not been identified with any certainty
An indication of the change of taste that heralded the full Louis XIV style can be noted in the animal heads below the baskets in the Nissim de Camondo carpet. Another carpet, ascribed by Verlet to circa 1660, encloses the floral sprays within large scrolling acanthus leaves (Verlet, op.cit., fig.107, p.173). By the time the large carpets for the Gallerie d'Apollon and the Grand Gallerie du Louvre were designed beginning in the mid-1660s (the first were delivered in 1667), the baskets and ribbons had almost disappeared, while the scrolling acanthus was fully dominant. The variety of floral sprays that are so beautifully observed on the present fragment were reduced to a minor decorative motif
Little is known in detail about the production of carpets in this formative period of the Savonnerie workshops. The picture is further clouded by there having been two royal manufactories, one in the Palais du Louvre, the other at the old soap factory in Chaillot. These were run by two men bitterly opposed to each other, but today nothing is known for sure about the differences between their carpets. Indications are that Dupont at the Louvre produced finer and more varied designs, while Lourdet at the Savonnerie produced somewhat coarser carpets which followed fewer cartoons but which were easier to sell (Verlet, op. cit., p.161). The designs seem to have been based upon florilegia of the period, such as Pierre Vallet's Le Jardin du Roy Très-Chrétien Henri IV, Roy de France et de Navarre of 1608, with a very wide variety of flowers to be found in a single carpet. In the Rothschild carpet Mr Wilfred Blunt identified no less than twenty-six different species without counting different hybrids. Unfortunately the artists who worked up the carpet designs from the printed source material have also not been identified with any certainty
An indication of the change of taste that heralded the full Louis XIV style can be noted in the animal heads below the baskets in the Nissim de Camondo carpet. Another carpet, ascribed by Verlet to circa 1660, encloses the floral sprays within large scrolling acanthus leaves (Verlet, op.cit., fig.107, p.173). By the time the large carpets for the Gallerie d'Apollon and the Grand Gallerie du Louvre were designed beginning in the mid-1660s (the first were delivered in 1667), the baskets and ribbons had almost disappeared, while the scrolling acanthus was fully dominant. The variety of floral sprays that are so beautifully observed on the present fragment were reduced to a minor decorative motif