French Tapestries
Have you ever sat in a French café and watched the world go by. Sharp dressers and a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ in their whole demeanor! The French have always been experts at life at its best. Food, wine, love, Eiffel Tower, the Left Bank, Notre Dame, art and tapestries to name just a few. We walk the streets of Paris (and apart from not understanding the language) we are somehow fascinated by their lifestyle. What are we missing? Nobody seems to be in a hurry (apart from the insane drivers that seem bent on running you over)! Lunch seems to go on forever over 2 or 3 glasses of wine with a little bifsteak and pommes frites (that’s steak and French fries) and endless conversation. If we could only speak the language!
The French have expressed themselves in so many different ways over the centuries. Art, Versailles, chateaux throughout France hung extravagantly with hand woven tapestries, exceptional wine, cathedrals etc etc. The list is endless. They even invented the guillotine to accommodate a few monarchs and aristocratic heads.
French history has been eloquently recorded in tapestries. Many of these wall hanging tapestries were lost to history during the French Revolution when they were burned to extract the gold and silver that was woven into the threads. All that remains of some of these precious works of art are the original ‘cartoons’ or painters art work on canvas. These were the preparatory pieces that the weavers would use to guide them in the weaving of the hand woven tapestries.
Today we have many tapestries that have been reproduced either from these cartoons or from some of the remaining wall tapestries that were in the Chateaux of the Loire Valley. One set that is a series of different views of Chateaux of the Loire were commissioned by the King. Names such as Chateau de Monceau, Chateau Chambord, Chateau Blois etc remain with us to this day. One of the most detailed and exquisite wall tapestries created by the famous Gobelins weavers of Paris was the Autumn Wine Harvest depicting the harvest , pressing of the grapes and of course the final ‘tasting’.
A trip to France is not absolutely essential to enjoy the beauty of tapestries in your own home, and perhaps they may even inspire to have a little bacchanalian feast of ones own.