Looms In Paris: The Gobelins looms in Paris, which had been established about 1446 by two brothers of that name, were consolidated with several other small private looms in the same neighborhood and became a huge state institution and Royal Manufactory under the patronage of Louis XIV in 1662. In the early years of its existence, furniture and other objects connected with the decorative arts were made as well as tapestries. Louis appointed his Minister of Fine Arts, Charles Le Brun, as Director and chief designer. These looms were manned by both French and Flemish weavers, and, with their enormous output, during most of the 17th century they shared the honors with the looms at Brussels. Later Beauvais and Aubusson came under royal support, and with the aid of the finest artists that France could produce, tapestries of wondrous beauty and weave were made to furnish the homes of the nobility and to enrich the walls of the churches and public buildings. When Louis XIV was forced to close temporarily the Gobelins works in 1690, due to financial difficulties, the production of the Beauvais factory, still under royal patronage, took a definite upward trend. Upon the reopening of the Gobelins between 1694 and 1699, the Renaissance fashion of Beauvais was well established, and the Gobelins weavers were forced to follow a style very different from that of their earlier work. In the 18th century, Beauvais, Gobelins, and Aubusson were all great centers of the art, which, from the design standpoint, had lost a considerable amount of its earlier dignity and grandeur as the tendency developed to reproduce oil paintings rather than to accentuate in the pattern the substance of the Textile medium.
The Selective Shopper on the Prowl Paris is a shopper's heaven, especially if the shopper is on the distaff side. It is an expensive heaven, in these days, notably excepting perfumes, which are far cheaper in Paris than in America, but the cost doesn't seem to frighten tourists away. Paris est toujours Paris.
These names designate the various looms upon which carpets are woven and the method of construction of the fabric. On the early looms all carpets were woven in strips 27 inches wide, this being the length of the old Flemish measuring unit known as an "ell." Large sizes had to be made by sewing the narrow strips together. Strip carpeting is now made 27 and 36 inches wide, and in what are known as broadlooms, which are produced in standard widths of 9, 12, 15, and 18 feet, and in other special widths, and of almost any reasonable length. Plain and patterned Rugs with borders are also woven in many standard sizes and chenille weaves are available in widths up to 30 feet.
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