After 200 years of existence, the Maison Braquenié is celebrating its bicentenary and launching a collection of fabrics, wallpapers, rugs and carpets, as impressive in its scope as in the number of archival documents that make it up.
The Pierre Frey heritage collection brings together more than 16,000 documents from the Braquenié archives. All these drawings, watercolours, carpet samples, books, textiles, dresses, tunics and waistcoats are all motifs and colours that inspired the House's design studio.
More than 40 documents were used to design the collection. The designers re-edited certain motifs identically, modified the scale, isolated a part of a design and combined it with another... Other colours were proposed and different techniques worked on: the original reds and blues became pastels or were declined in more contemporary parms and greens. Prints are transformed into embroideries, jacquards or velvets, small textile designs become large patterns on paper...
Four major themes emerge, revealing the singularity of the House of Braquenié: the Jouy canvases of the Royal Manufacture of Oberkampf, whose designs Braquenié bought in 1843; the pleasures of the countryside dear to Marie-Antoinette; fashion and its small motifs intimately interwoven with those of the world of decoration; and finally, exoticism, with its famous Indians, palempores and kalemkars evoking desires for other lands and territories of a thousand riches.
Through its aesthetic, technical and cultural approach, the ANNIVERSARY 1823-2023 collection, by reinventing Braquenié's classics, bears witness to the timelessness of its heritage and celebrates the quintessence of French style.
The Manufacture d'Oberkampf
The Rivers of the Indus
Printed on a woodblock by the Manufacture Royale d'Oberkampf around 1791, this motif is better known as the Chinese imbricated motif. It consists of decorative elements found at the base of Indian trees of life. It is traditionally printed on a flat frame in France on cotton percale and is available as wallpaper in its traditional red colour as well as in a new celadon shade.
Petit Jouy
As its name suggests, this is a reproduction of a canvas printed on a wood block at the Manufacture Royale d'Oberkampf in Jouy en Josas in the last quarter of the 18th century. Its scale made it suitable for clothing. Petit Jouy is printed on a cotton percale, classic and timeless in its original red colour or in the blue and green imagined by the design studio.
Country scene
The fabric and its coordinated wallpaper, Scènes de campagne, are the reproduction of bucolic scenes from a Jouy canvas printed on a wood block by the Manufacture Royale d'Oberkampf around 1785. Its dating is attested to by the presence of a balloon, the very first flight of which was from Paris in 1783. The original document preserved in the House's heritage collection is a quilt, probably used in a bed for the duchess.
The pleasures of the countryside
The Ranunculus
A charming stripe decorated with ranunculus and tulips, interspersed with medallions and ribbons and set against a picoté background, this cylinder-printed wallpaper in three pastel colours reproduces La souche fleurie, a canvas printed on a woodblock in Beautiran around 1790.
Marie-Paule
Surprising for the authenticity of its tile construction on a natural linen background, this charming decoration of bunches of currants reproduces the cross-stitch embroidery of a 19th century document.
Marigold
This small carnation motif, a flower from India also known as Marigold, is printed on a semi-automatic flat-framed wallpaper that gives it the look of a woodblock print as was the original quilted and quilted quilt. It has been produced in five colours.
Fashion history
The Discreet
Delicate monochrome flowers intermingle with bucolic scenes, musical instruments and boats in this design, which reproduces the pattern of a petticoat made from a cotton canvas printed around 1775. It has been adapted as wallpaper by the design studio and is available in four colours.
The Elegant
Remarkable for its finesse, this delicate stripe of flowers and leaves embroidered on linen reinterprets the decoration of a charming embroidered waistcoat from the late 18th century.
Voile de Gênes
The panoramic Voile de Gênes, depicting a tree-of-life design on a flowery mound populated by a giraffe, a deer and a lion, was originally a large shawl printed with a woodblock on a fine cotton canvas in the 19th century. The design studio has accomplished the stylistic exercise of transforming this fashion accessory into a large panoramic, whose verdigris colour evokes the spirit of ancient greenery in a contemporary way.
Exoticism
Calicut
The Calicut métis canvas print is a continuous composition of an 18th century Indian tree of life painting.
Fleury and Fleumartin
Fleury and Fleumartin both reinterpret, in very different ways, the same detail of large scales on the base of a kalemkar from the House's archives. One is woven in jacquard with a linen weft and thread crossings allowing a subtle play of colours in soft, contrasting shades, while the second is a damask woven on a silk thread warp and wefted with cotton and linen. Its brocatelle-inspired construction gives its four bold colours a subtle relief and a fine shine.
The Bird Tree
A delightful panel representing a cypress tree placed on a mound decorated with peacocks and other numerous birds, a cotton kalemkar painted and printed in the 19th century in India gave birth to the large panoramic wallpaper The Bird Tree.
