Conférence : “The Rothschild Savonneries : An Encyclopaedia of French Royal Carpet Weaving”.

Manufacture de la Savonnerie d’après Pierre-Josse Perrot, tapis, ca. 1775-1800, laine, 955 x 535 cm, Versailles, musée des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon.

Type : conférence.
Date de l’événement : 13 mai 2019.
Lieu : Spencer House, 27 St James’s Place, Londres.

Join Wolf Burchard for this Spencer House Lecture, The Rothschild Savonneries: An Encyclopaedia of French Royal Carpet Weaving. The Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor comprises the largest and most comprehensive collection of Savonnerie carpets and upholstered furniture outside France. Dr Burchard will revisit the history of the Savonnerie manufactory for its beginnings under Henri IV and Louis XIII to the present day, focusing on its major commissions for the Louvre, Versailles, and Notre Dame. His talk will also examine the dispersal of many of these weavings after the French Revolution in 1789, both through sale and as diplomatic gifts, as well as the rising British and American taste for Savonnerie carpets beginning around 1900.

The lecture will take place on Monday, 13 May at 6.30pm (doors open at 6.00pm). It will be followed by drinks and an opportunity to look at the restored 18th-century State Rooms at Spencer House. Adult ticket price (£15) includes one complimentary drink.

Wolf Burchard is Associate Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, formerly Furniture Research Curator at the National Trust. He is the author of The Sovereign Artist: Charles Le Brun and the Image of Louis XIV, which was partly funded by The Rothschild Foundation. Burchard has worked extensively on the Savonnerie manufactory and in 2012 published an update of Pierre Verlet’s catalogue of Louis XIV’s carpets for the Louvre’s Long Gallery, adding newly discovered carpets, carpet fragments, and designs.