Manufacture des Gobelins

Historic · Les Gobelins (13th)Paris,France

A royal tapestry works gathered on one Paris site in 1662, where thirty weavers still take years over a single hanging.

The Manufacture des Gobelins is a working tapestry workshop, and weaving has never stopped on this ground. Thirty people work fifteen looms today, and six or seven finished pieces come off them in a year, so one hanging can occupy a weaver for several years. The gallery on the avenue shows finished work, and the looms themselves are seen only on a guided visit. When a piece is done, the house says that it falls from the loom. Colbert gathered the scattered workshops of Paris onto this ground in 1662 and set them to furnishing the king's palaces. The other half of the place is the dye house. The chemist Eugène Chevreul took charge of it in 1824 and held the post for nearly sixty years. What he worked out there about how colours behave beside one another went on to shape a century of painting. The vats are still running.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The workshops open one day a week — The gallery keeps ordinary exhibition hours, but the looms themselves are only reached on a guided visit, and places on it go early.
The designs are made by living artists — They are commissioned to paint the full-size patterns, so the image on the loom is usually a modern one, woven by a seventeenth-century method.
Count the bobbins hanging off one loom — Each holds a different shade, and a weaver may use dozens of them across a single hand's width of cloth.

Things to do

1
Watch a weaver look in the mirror
On the workshop tour you stand behind the looms, on the same side as the weavers. The picture forms on the far face of the cloth, so the weavers cannot see it directly. A mirror hung beyond the threads shows it to them. Watch how often they glance at that mirror while they work.
2
Work out how long the piece in front of you has taken
Six or seven tapestries leave this building in a year, and there are fifteen looms. Look at how much of the picture is finished on one loom, then at the calendar pinned beside it if there is one. Most pieces take years rather than months, and more than one weaver works at the same loom in turn.
3
See what is on the looms now, not three centuries ago
The gallery hangs finished work, and a good part of it is recent. The manufactory commissions living artists to draw the full-size designs, called cartoons, so a piece from this decade hangs in the same rooms as one from the seventeenth century. Look closely at the modern ones: the weaving is the same, only the image has changed.