THERE IS a textile museum in the outskirts of Paris dedicated to explaining the production of Toile de Jouy fabric and brimming with original examples. I read about it many years ago in Victoria magazine and put it on my “must do someday” list.
Toile means “cloth” in French and “Toile de Jouy” refers to the fabric that was first manufactured at a factory in Jouy-en-Josas, a village located outside of Paris. The factory, founded in 1760 by Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, was known for its monochromatic toiles, which depicted scenes printed in red, blue, or black, on a white or cream background.
On a recent trip to Paris with my husband, Bill, I was hoping we could fit it in but we only had a few days and our itinerary was already chock full. Mentioning it to him I explained that the museum is located in the suburbs of Paris, it would be very hard to find, we would have to take the train to get there, etc. That did it. He loves a challenge and his favorite thing is to pour over train schedules especially ones in a foreign language. I believe he was more excited about the journey than the destination but whatever it took was fine with me.Paris is a city dedicated to design and that day we were visiting the Museum of Decorative Arts. We thought it prudent to ask at the information desk for more details about the Toile Museum before dedicating a precious day to this side trip. Bill worked up the French and the courage to ask. The desk clerk looked at us quite perplexed as if he had never heard of it. Surely it was our broken French that he was misunderstanding, but no, he proceeded to look it up on the internet because he had never heard of it! I was thinking this did not bode well for us but Bill explained it was even more of a challenge and now we had to go.
The next day, 1 ½ hours and a few train connections later we were deposited in that sleepy little town of Jouy-en-Josas. It was a short walk through a charming French village to the XIXth Century chateau. Once through the doors we were handed an English audio guide to aid us as we strolled through the galleries.
We learned that Oberkampf’s biggest fans were the upper classes and royalty in particular. One of the most memorable toile prints, called “Les travaux de la manufacture” (the activity of the factory) depicted the process involved in fabric production at Jouy, showing the workers laying the newly printed yards of cloth out in the fields to dry. Marie Antoinette was fond of the pastoral scenes with idealistic views of farm life. One of the toiles showed a scene of a newly invented hot air balloon ascending above a crowd of onlookers. Bill said that maybe toiles were the newspapers of their day.
If you are ever in the neighborhood you must visit this marvelous museum. It is well worth the train ride from Paris. There the secret is out!
