• Home
  • Houses
    • Outside
    • Celeb, Show & Historic Houses
    • Our Houses
  • Kitchens
    • Blk&Wht Kitchen
    • Blue Kitchen
    • Gray & Neutral Kitchens
    • Green Kitchen
    • Red, Orange, Purple Kitchen
    • White Kitchen
    • Yellow Kitchen
    • Rustic Kitchen
    • Wood Kitchen
    • Modern Kitchen
    • Kitchen & Cabinet Features
    • Sinks & Faucets
  • Decor
    • Accessories
    • Collecting
    • Color
    • Domestic Details
    • Holiday
    • For Kids
    • Laundry-Utility-Mudrooms
    • For Pets
    • Picture Walls & Windows
    • Rooms
    • Rugs
  • Bathrooms
    • Cottage Bath
    • Eclectic Bath
    • Modern Bath
    • Traditional Bath
    • Powder Room
    • Bath Features
  • Cooking
  • Press
  • About
  • Contact

Atticmag

Home Décor & Home Cooking

  • Home
  • Houses
    • Outside
    • Celeb, Show & Historic Houses
    • Our Houses
  • Kitchens
    • Blk&Wht Kitchen
    • Blue Kitchen
    • Gray & Neutral Kitchens
    • Green Kitchen
    • Red, Orange, Purple Kitchen
    • White Kitchen
    • Yellow Kitchen
    • Rustic Kitchen
    • Wood Kitchen
    • Modern Kitchen
    • Kitchen & Cabinet Features
    • Sinks & Faucets
  • Decor
    • Accessories
    • Collecting
    • Color
    • Domestic Details
    • Holiday
    • For Kids
    • Laundry-Utility-Mudrooms
    • For Pets
    • Picture Walls & Windows
    • Rooms
    • Rugs
  • Bathrooms
    • Cottage Bath
    • Eclectic Bath
    • Modern Bath
    • Traditional Bath
    • Powder Room
    • Bath Features
  • Cooking
  • Press
  • About
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Decor / Rooms / Toile Bedrooms

Toile Bedrooms

March 27, 2016 by Jane F Leave a Comment

 toile bedrooms - bedroom by Alessandra Branca using Qadrille's Ballon de Gonesse toile in black and white - Elle Decor via AtticmagTraditional Toile de jouy prints preserve the French look of 18th century single pattern bedrooms.

Firmly traditional in its origin and motif, toile is the first printed cotton manufactured in France. Nearly 250 years ago, in a factory founded by Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf at Jouy-in-Josas ten miles southwest of Paris, copper plates were used to print print elaborately drawn color designs on plain fabric. Copper engraving allowed for hand-drawn detail — mainly vignettes of French country life, events, landscapes, flowers, woodlands, wildlife and the beloved Chinoiserie themes that often include parasols, pagodas, people in conical Asian hats, and monkeys (singerie). Maxing out toile by using the same fabric for walls, curtains, linens and upholstery was very much the French 18th century fashion.

The strengths of toile are its color, the charm of the scenes, and the intensity of the repeated motifs to create a mood in a bedroom. Yet the strengths are also its weakness. Toile isn’t an easy mix for modern interiors. The designs are so muscular they tend to work best when toile dominates. Often, though, toile is mixed with accent fabrics — checks like Scalamandre’s Decatur plaid for the bed curtain lining in a design by Alessandra Branca [top]. Yet, inevitably toile is the star.

For this black and white bedroom with yellow accents, Branca chose Quadrille’s Ballon de Gonesse as the all-over pattern for walls, draperies and the bedcover. While country scenes with French peasants and hot air balloons may not appeal to modernists, this particular fabric pattern happens to have a fascinating back story which I stumbled upon. According to documentation by  the Cooper Hewitt museum, which owns an original 18th century textile of this design, here’s how to read this toile:

On August 27, 1783, the skies above the French commune of Gonesse were briefly darkened by a floating figure. The peasants, filled with fear by the unusual sight, shot down the hovering object and attacked it with pitchforks because they believed it was a monster. The “monster” was actually a hot air balloon. This scene of armed farmers surrounding a deflated balloon is one of the vignettes depicted on Le Ballon de Gonesse, a commemorative textile that captures the popularity of balloons in late eighteenth-century France.

The experimentation with and successful flights of hot air balloons in France from 1783 to 1787 resulted in “Balloon Mania.” During this period balloons became favored motifs in the visual and decorative arts…Textile producers realized that depicting contemporary events on fabrics would result in greater sales because the fabrics would appeal to a wider audience and, in addition, serve a patriotic purpose by celebrating French achievements. Le Ballon de Gonesse, produced by the Oberkampf factory in Jouy, depicts three balloon scenes from events that took place in 1783. These events were popular in the press and were a source of national pride, perfect subjects for a printed textile.  The first scene shows the August 27th flight of an unmanned balloon that was launched by Jacques A. C. Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert and unexpectedly and dramatically ended by the people of Gonesse.”

toile bedrooms - vivid green Osborne & Little 'Rococo' toile in Kate Spade's guest room - World of Interiors via AtticmagIn the New York apartment of women’s wear designer Kate Spade, a small guest bedroom was decorated with a vivid green toile wallpaper and matching fabric — Osborne & Little’s Rococo pattern depicting vignettes of Chinese pagodas and ladies in a landscape linked by dense garlands. The quieter French daybed is upholstered with dark green velvet trimmed with white rather than a competing pattern.

toile bedroom - taupe Thibaut toile in a Dutch attic master bedroom - Malcolm Duffin via AtticmagA taupe-on-white Thibaut toile cranks down the intensity in a Dutch attic master bedroom. Tamed also by the architecture, and paired with a different print fabric on the bed, the tone-on-tone toile it almost looks transitional although it is used in the traditional way on walls, ceiling and for the ottoman. I love the subtlety.

toile bedrooms - Grey Watkins Enchanted Forest green toile in a San Francisco townhouse - Tucker & Marks via AtticmagA dense and exotic Grey Watkins green toile, called Enchanted Forest, was used to the nth degree by Tucker & Marks, San Francisco designers who specialize in traditional interiors.  No matching wallpaper in this top-floor bedroom of a Beaux Arts townhouse — walls are fabric-upholstered with gimp covering the seams. And here, everything matches including the Roman window shade, window seat cushion, and the upholstered French provincial beds. Exquisite bed quilts with coordinating motifs and equally beautiful pillows help complete the full-on 18th century look.

toile bedrooms - white on blue Duralee toile in a bedroom by Mary Douglas Drysdale - Trad Home via AtticmagMost boisterous of all is the unconventional French blue Duralee toile, with white reverse pattern. In a Washington D.C. row house filled with vibrant blues and greens, designer Mary Douglas Drysdale used the toile for the bed skirt, cover, pillows, walls plus the swagged drapery on the bed niche. A small scale blue print on white background lightens up the look of the wall behind the bed without any loss of impact.

(Source: Elle Décor, World of Interiors, Malcolm Duffin, Tucker & Marks, Trad Home)

You also might like Single Pattern Rooms and Layering Pattern

Copy and Paste Shortlink to Quick Share this Post: http://bit.ly/1UmCvPB

Filed Under: Rooms Tagged With: 18th century single pattern bedrooms, Alessandra Branca, Atticmag, beige and white bedrooms, blue bedroom, blue Duralee toile, Elle Decor, French print wallpaper bedrooms, French style bedrooms, French toile de jouy, green bedrooms, Grey Watkins Enchanted Forest toile, Kate Spade, Malcolm Duffin, Mary Douglas Drysdale, matching wallpaper and fabric in bedrooms, Osborne & Little Rococo toile, Quadrille Ballons de Gonesse, toile bedrooms, Trad Home, Tucker & Marks, World of Interiors

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This blog is kept spam free by WP-SpamFree.

Home Decor

mini two-compartment architectural planter by Vagabond Vintage - via Atticmag

Mini Architectural Planters

September 5, 2018 By Jane F Leave a Comment

linen bed sheets - Italian linen triple hemstich linen bed sheets -Cuddledown via Atticmag

Making Sense of Linen Bed Sheets

May 30, 2018 By Jane F 2 Comments

ready made curtain hack for store bought linen panels - aticmag

Ready-Made Curtain Panels Hack

May 7, 2018 By Jane F 5 Comments

cobalt blue front door - Southern Living via Atticmag

Front Door Blues

May 14, 2017 By Jane F 2 Comments

peony pink - vase of pink peony flowers - Pinterest via Atticmag

Peony Pink Power

April 24, 2017 By Jane F 1 Comment

Recent Comments

  • justin leon on Kitchen Cabinet Pull-Out Ideas
  • Jane on Making Sense of Linen Bed Sheets
  • Sherrie on Unfitted English Kitchens
  • Marilyn on Whimsical Bicycle Vanity
  • ann rattay on Vintage Limoges & Silver Table
Tweets by atticmag

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in