A rare Jansen Modernist carpet,
Aubusson, France. Circa 1950. After a design attributed to Stephane Boudin (1888-1967) and made at the Hamot workshop in Aubusson, France.
Made of wool with golden metal threads highlights.
13ft 2in x 9ft 5 in : 401cm x 286cm
In 1880, Jean Henri Jansen, a Dutch emigre, established his store on the Rue Royale in Paris, primarily to sell furniture, later developed the interior design department and started to make his own designed furniture, gaining important clients, King Leopold of Belgium and the Vanderbilts of New York, to name a few.
With the appointment of Stephane Boudin as principal director in 1936, the stylistic direction of the firm changed, his clients were from the old conservative background but needed to modernise their homes, so a combination of classical designs from the Louis's to Empire with details borrowed from the Vienna Seccession, Modernism and the Art Deco, created a hybrid of the Jansen style working on projects for notable patrons: Nancy Lancaster, Elsie de Wolfe, the Patinos, Coco Channel, the Wrightsman and Heinz families and perhaps their most important commissions: John and Jackie Kennedy for the White House and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Maison Jensen exhibited in major fairs including the influential 1900 Paris Exposition Universal and 1925 Exposition des Arts Decorative, Paris again in 1937, Paris and one year later the New York's World's Fair. These fairs together with Boudin at the helm made the firm truly international world leader in the field of decoration expanding into four continents with offices in Paris, London, Havana, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Rome and Prague.
The present carpet, of flat weave, has a design with a Greek key border after the antique and a lattice field design of gold and grey tones. The colouring of a black field, inspired by the black ground Savonnerie carpets made for the Grand Gallery of the Palais du Louvre for Louis XIV. Of note is the use of golden metal threads.
Though with these period influences, the carpet has a certain moderne ambiance and at the time when made, was considered tres chic. With great design comes a timeless quality which enables one to use the carpet in both traditional or modern interior design schemes.
