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Item Number: 125707
Title: Folie textile : Mode et décoration sous le Second Empire
Author: Bringel, Anne-Rose (et al)
Price: Not Available
ISBN: 9782711860876
Description: Paris: Musees nationaux, 2013. 28cm., pbk., 143pp. with numerous color illus. Exhibition held at Musées et domaine nationaux du Palais impérial de Compiègne. French text. Summary: Fabrics were very much in vogue in home decoration and fashion under the Second Empire (1852 - 1870), encouraged by the sumptuous festivities in the court of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie and by unprecedented development in the textile industry. Crinoline dresses demanded yards of fabric and ever more trimmings, while the imperial palaces or private mansions made lavish use of fabrics to decorate walls and furniture, as contemporary photographs show. Textiles became a symbol of wealth and comfort. This escalade, fuelled by technical innovations and the first department stores, created a veritable ‘craze’ for textiles. The exhibition at the Palais de Compiègne looks at the extraordinary profusion of textiles during the Second Empire and explores the parallels between clothing and upholstery fabrics. Because the Second Empire saw the invention of synthetic dyes and the spread of textile printing, the exhibition presents the colours and patterns in fashion at the time: flowers, stripes and oriental patterns invaded the textile sector. An evocation of the work rooms of an upholsterer and a seamstress show how cloth and trims (braid, lace, embroidery and ribbons) were assembled, step by step. Panoramas in which textiles are employed in various ways give a glimpse of upper class life at the time: the apartment of a guest at court, an evocation of Empress Eugenie’s bedroom in the Elysee palace with her magnificent bed on show for the first time since its restoration. The exhibition brings together around 200 works – clothes and furnishings but also paintings, watercolours and photographs showing how meticulously artists represented fabrics. It also presents the Palais de Compiègne’s fascinating collection of clothes linked to Empress Eugenie and Napoleon III’s cousin Princess Mathilde, which, for conservation reasons, is seldom open to the public. The extraordinary quality and variety of textile design during the Second Empire are explored thanks to remarkable loans from the Musée de l'Impression sur Etoffes in Mulhouse, a partner in the exhibition, the Musée des Tissus de Lyon, the Mobilier national, the château de Fontainebleau, the musée du costume de Château-Chinon, the Decorative Arts, Galliera - Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris and factories as Prelle and Tassinari & Chatel.

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