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Toile ![Toile]()
Farm and Rooster Toile Fabric
A toile fabric tells a story. When you decorate with this authentic French Country cotton toile fabric, the story is life on a French country farm. Cotton toile fabric is charming and cozy for toile curtains, upholstery, pillows, slipcovers or any decorating need. Transport your country kitchen or family room to France with a toile fabric. Add your own French country accents and voila! You’ve created a delightful French country backdrop for family gatherings and home entertaining.
Width 35.3"
Repeat: 12.5" x 35.3"
60" wide toile fabric.
Toile fabric printed in and imported from France.
Coordinates with our rooster toile
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|  Toile French Country Farm
| | Toile French Country Swatch
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The History of ToileToile is a French word for cloth. To understand the history of Toile fabric, pronounced (twahl) one has consider the history of fabric in many countries. In the Western world, printed fabrics did not really come into their own until the Dutch East India companies, (the Dutch in 1597, the English in 1600, and the French in 1664) started bringing back cloth from India. Compared to the European cloth, Indian cloth was lightweight, superior in dye fastness and had bright, exotic patterns. Europeans immediately started imitating it. The English and Irish led the industry for a while but the French were the ones who became famous for and perfected the fabric we know today as "toile de jouy."
The French success was due to a German man named Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf (1738-1815) who was working in Switzerland and was invited to come to France in 1758 to set up a new print-works there. | Initially Oberkampf used the same wood blocks the British were using. However when he heard about the less labor intensive superior technique of copper engraving that was invented in Ireland in 1770, he obtained a Swiss machine capable of printing fabric with copperplates to use in his factory at Jouy near Versailles.
The Oberkampf name became synonymous with the word "toile," which is what the monochromatic prints the Oberkamph factory printed were called, so much so that toiles are still called "Toile de Jouy."
In 1783, Louis the XVI(1754-93) granted the Jouy works the title of Manufacture Royale, and in 1806 Oberkamph was invested with the Legion d'honneur by Napoleon I (1769-1821). |
 | The Oberkamph fabric factory survived its founder's death in 1815 but eventually closed in 1843 when the center of fabric production in France moved to the areas of Alsace and Rouen in Normandy. This is the area our red and white toile fabric is from.
Perhaps today's toile fabric is less grand than the decorative fabric that the French aristocrats like Marie Antoinette were attracted to, but they are still very a la mode fabrics for decorating.
RESOURCES:
Next time you are in Paris, take a short side trip to The Museum of Toile de Jouy where you will find all of Oberkampf's correspondence. It is in a lovely Chateau and there is a tea room.
Linda Dannenberg's blog is another great French Country Resource
Closer to home, at the Baltimore Museum of Art, you will find French fabric including a collection of Oberkamph's toiles | | Here’s what WIKIPEDIA tells us about toile fabric: Toile |
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