5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect Gifts for Friends who Love to Write, July 18, 2004
This review is from: Toiles de Jouy Note Cards (Misc. Supplies)
Painted cottons were developed in India in the fourteenth century. When printed and painted beautiful cottons appeared from India in the seventeenth century, a French embargo was placed on the import, manufacture, and sale of foreign fabrics.
Jouy is an area of France that is very famous for making Toile fabrics. Jouy-en-Josas is a little town near Versailles, southwest of Paris. The Manufacture Royale de Jouy was founded in Joy-en-Josas along the Bièvre river. This factory once employed 1,300 workers who printed miles of fabric. The fabric was printed using copper sheets, which allow precise drawings that are much more detailed than those carved on wood.
Jean-Baptiste Huet (1745-1811) was the artist who's drawings for the copper sheets were later called toiles de Jouy (Jouy fabrics). Soon, a carved copper roll printed 5,000 meters of fabric in one day. Hippolyte le Bas, Jean-Louis Demarne, Horace Vernet were some of the famous painters who loved designing for those interested in Egypt and mythology. While the factory closed, some new prints are still made by using old drawings from the Textile Museum in Mulhouse.
I've recently given away some of these beautiful Gibbs Smith cards to friends who love to write, but this is a box I'm keeping. These "Toiles De Jouy" cards are beautiful and are printed with reproductions of 18th-century French fabric and wallpaper designs. The box itself is very collectable and I'm thinking of filling it with letters from a friend.
The box has a hinged lid and contains 20 note cards and 20 envelopes. There are four designs and five cards printed with each design.
The first card is bursting with pink flowers, tiny scenes from far-away lands and an elephant, bird and interesting deer creature. Each picture is framed in a pink circle and the flowers meander around the frames.
The second card is highly decorative and you can see the fabric texture and delicate, almost antique quality of the monochromatic slate blue designs set against the vanilla fabric.
My favorite and third card in this collection is a scene of flowers and leaves with animal heads. It is like the flowers and leaves have their own personalities or animals are being born from mysterious and unnamed species of plants. A green and pink flower burst with stars while mythical beast hides behind a sharply edged leaf. I especially noticed the seven-pointed star flowers and the intricate and imaginative flower designs in purple, fuschia and dark green.
The last card has pastoral scenes and contains pictures of angels, roosters, children dancing in circles to music and outdoor retreats all in a gray print.
You may also enjoy: Toiles de Jouy by Betty Lou Phillips or look for the complete history of these textiles in Toile de Joy by Melanie Riffel.
If you love these cards, you can also still purchase fabrics online and some of the "ancient" prints are stunningly beautiful.
~The Rebecca Review
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