On this last day of May, we step back in time to Second Empire France with a 19th-century expression of the Alhambra, as seen through the lens of the famed Welsh architect and designer Owen Jones.
Jones had visited the Alhambra in 1834 and in 1837 and published his findings in a series of books in 1842–45 and again in the widely disseminated The Grammar of Ornament (1856). The French designer of the two silk atelier samples shown below was no doubt inspired by Jones’s chromolithographs depicting details of the Spanish complex’s stucco work.
The mania for “Moorish”-style designs peaked in the later 19th century, and these silks were likely produced between about 1860 and 1880. These two variants of an Alhambresque pattern would have suited the fumoir or smoking room, where elite men retired after dinner. But the delicacy of line and color also could have made them candidates for upholstery and drapery in brighter, more typically feminine spaces.
The technically advanced weaving of these lampas panels indicate that they were produced at one of Lyon’s powerhouse luxury silk manufactures. The numeric stamps specifying the patron numbers have not yet been attached to a particular firm; however, Mathevon et Bouvard, Lemire, and Lamy et Giraud were all known for their striking mauresques.
“Moresque No. 3,” from Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (1856), pl. XLI.
