Setting the Elegance
pp. 006
/007
The Musée des Tissus de Lyon was opened
to the public in 1864. It had been founded in 1856,
following the first Great Exhibition in London after
calls made for a museum by silk manufacturers in
Lyon.
The collection housed was intended to make way
for new creative design through prime examples
from the past. Today this collection is the largest
in the world with close to two million five hundred
thousand references, covering four thousand five
hundred years of textile production, from the Egypt
of the pharaohs up to more recent production.
This primary mission of the museum as
a source of inspiration and fostering of creation
lies still today at the heart of the interests of the
organisation. Artists, designers and manufacturers
are regularly invited to discover the wealth
of the collection for adding to their production.
It is on this basis that the joint project with
Moroso and Rubelli was developed. For the occasion
of the exhibition A sideways Glance - Moroso, an
exploration in decorative Arts and Design held
recently at the Musée des Tissus et des Arts
décoratifs de Lyon, Patrizia Moroso sought to
create a set of unique pieces. To do so she contacted
Rubelli in order to produce a fabric inspired by
historic pointed paper housed in the museum.
This challenge produced an outstanding textile
used to upholster some pieces of furniture designed
by Patricia Urquiola and Doshi Levien.
The original pointed paper (inv. MT 49489.6)
has a delicate decoration, composed of cascading
drapery and ribbons interwoven with sprigs of
flowers, in which a pair of doves rest on a bouquet
embellished with a straw hat and ears of corn, and
it’s reminiscent of the style of Marie-Antoinette,
future queen of France, with its bucolic motifs.
As from the 1770s Philippe de Lasalle, one of
the most remarkable manufacturers in Lyon,
introduced compositions combining pairs of birds,
branches with flowers and additional motifs which
earned him very lucrative orders from the French
court and foreign kings and queens. The pointed
paper of the Musèe des Tissus was designed within
the circle of Philippe de Lasalle and according
to the style which the artist had made fashionable.
It is a typical example of production in Lyon in the
last quarter of the eighteenth century.
Which is why Patrizia Moroso chose it to
celebrate the event at the Musée des Tissus.
Through this partnership with two of the most
prestigious companies in Italy, Moroso and Rubelli,
the Musée des Tissus is proud to make
a contribution to the excellence of contemporary
creativity, with added inventiveness thanks to the
innovative technique implemented here by Rubelli:
the fabric produced from the pointed paper is not
the one foreseen by this technical drawing but
instead the identical copy of the technical drawing
itself. —
Lo sguardo laterale. Moroso, une recherche entre Arts décoratifs et Design
Musée des Tissus et Musée des Arts décoratifs de Lyon
Codes > p. 168
