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History of Indiennes Provencales
(Souleiado)
Block-printed cottons imported from India became highly popular in France during the seventeenth century. Featuring abstractions of small flowers repeated in high-contrast colors, these fabrics became so popular, in fact, that they were banned by the Crown, which sponsored its own textile manufacture. In France, cotton-print production was based in the town of Tarascon in Provence. Since Provence traditionally resisted the authority of the Crown, the people of Tarascon secretly continued to produce their copies of the indiennes, rejecting the royal ban imposed by finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert in the mid seventeenth century. After the Revolution, production was once again permitted but the patterns fell from popularity. It was not until the 1930s that a local family by the name of Demery grew concerned with preserving regional traditions and assembled an archive of 40,000 of the formerly clandestine printing hand-blocks. They opened a manufactory in the center of Tarascon, with the printing workshops installed in a 17th century limestone hotel particulier (a mansion situated between a court-yard and a garden), where it remains. The company was named Souleiado (which means "a ray of sun shinning through the clouds after a rain" in the Provencal dialect).
The younger Demery adopted the Indiennes for home decoration, fashion, faience and accessories. In 1950 he opened the first Souleiado boutique in Florence. Demand so exceeded supply that he began to have cottons printed in factories, instead of by hand bloking, in 1977.
Americans embraced Souleiado in the 1970's after Pierre Moulin and Pierre LeVec started displaying the colorful prints in their Greenwich Village antiques shop, Pierre Deux.
In 1984 these dealers wrote (with Linda Dannenberg). "Pierre Deux's French Country," a book that popularized Souleiado along with Provencal antiques, pottery, gardens and d�cor. eventually they sold their name to an investment group that started the Pierre Deux stores, which carried Souleiado goods. When the company was restructured in the late 1980's, it switched its allegiance to another Provencal manufacturer of cotton prints.
Hence you have today only limited distribution of Souleiado products �.
So enjoy shopping here
Meri et a bientot!
FRENCH COUNTRY INTERIORS
606 Post Road East Location 561,
Westport, CT 06880
Phone Orders: 203-855-0522
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