Joubert de la Hiberderie’s Le Dessinateur d’étoffes d’or, d’argent, et de soie (1765) was the first book to be published on textile design in Europe. In preparation for the publication of an English translation and critical edition of the text this one day conference calls for papers that will analyse, critique, contextualise, review or otherwise engage with the Le dessinateur in the light of its themes: production, design, technology, education, botany and art. Joubert’s manual argues for both a liberal and a technological education for the ideal designer. Such a person must, he argues, have detailed knowledge of the materials, technologies and traditions of patterned silk in order successfully to propose new designs; he or she must also have taste and an eye for beauty, which call, he says, for travel in order to see both the beauties of nature and those of art gathered in the gardens and galleries of Paris and the île de France.
Programme
9.15 Welcome
9.20 Lesley Miller (The Victoria and Albert Museum), Introduction: Joubert, his book and his world
9.40 Keynote: Giorgio Riello (Professor of History and Director of the Warwick Institute of Advanced Study), Textile Trajectories: Fibres, Fabrics and Fashion in the early modern world
10.20 Jean-Paul Leclerq (formerly curator at the Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris), Weave and pattern, naming textiles: Le Dessinateur in a publishing context
11.00 Coffee
11.20 Isabella Campagnol (Lecturer in the History of Dress, Fashion and Textiles at the Instituto Marangoni, Milan), The Venetian Point of View: Pietro d’Avanzo and the ‘Regole per mecanica del telaio da seta’
12.00 Rosa Creixell (Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Barcelona) and Victoria de Lorenzo, Fabricating Novelty: The Barcelona Silk Trade in the Eighteenth Century (The Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum)
12.40 Discussion
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Anna Jolly (Curator at the Abegg-Stiftung, Switzerland), The Orders of Silk Design
14.40 Maximilien Durand (Director of the Musée des tissus et des arts décoratifs de Lyon) and Marie-Hélène Guelton, À propos de la “marque distinctive” de Philippe de Lasalle: surmonter la crise de 1771-1772 en produisant des étoffes mélangées (soie, schappe de soie et lin) au dessin nouveau
15.20 Tea
15.50 Iris Moon (Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Pratt Institute), A Rose is a Rose is a Rose: Botany and Patterns of Knowledge in ‘Le Dessinateur d’étoffes d’or, d’argent, et de soie’
16.30 Audrey Millet (Lecturer at the Université de Lille), From the Theory of Joubert to the practice of Henri Lebert: Paris, or the textile designer’s grand tour (c. 1750-c.1850)
17.10 Madelyn Shaw (Curator of Textiles at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington), ‘An Eye for beauty, A Taste for Novelty’: The Art Department of H.R. Mallinson & Co., Inc., 1913-1931
17.50 Closing Discussion