Subscribe to the very occasional mailing list >
Cart 0
Subscribe to the very occasional mailing list >
Cart 0
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)
[textiles]

De Tissage de Soies A Bluter, Societe Suisse Thal (Catalog of woven silk by Dufour, with 108 swatches)


Dufour & Comp., 1914.

Gilt-stamped red cloth hardcover 16mo. 9 heavy card leaves with a glossy deep royal blue-purple lining with tissue guards between leaves. 6 swatches mounted on each of the 18 pages, 108 samples in total. The company's history of gold medals at international expositions is commemorated on the covers, from the 1855 Paris Exposition to the 1914 Swiss National Exhibition in Berne, the occasion for which this booklet is believed to have been produced. Originally intended for agricultural uses, Dufour & Cie. eventually produced bolted silk in a range of grades and gauges, including fine silk organza used in couture.

"During trips to Holland, [Dufour] studied the weaving of silk cheesecloth and designed a new loom. At the request of Heinrich Bodmer, he founded in 1833 a silk stamen factory in Thal, where the climate lent itself to such an enterprise, and set up on his own. The Dufour & Cie house soon marketed the cloth used in mills for sifting flour worldwide and provided work for a large number of home weavers until the 1920s, particularly in the Appenzell Vorderland. In 1907, it merged with five stamens from Zurich to form the Swiss silk gauze factory SA, Thal and Zurich, which is still owned by the descendants of the six shareholder families and which in 1995 became the company Sefar, textiles and technology." Peter Müller: "Dufour, Pierre Antoine" in Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (DHS), translated from German.