Border of woven silk

Philippe de la Salle was the most celebrated silk designer in eighteenth-century Lyon, and this border shows exactly why his reputation was so extraordinary. Working at a time when Lyon dominated the European luxury textile trade, de la Salle pushed the Jacquard loom's capabilities far beyond what anyone thought possible, weaving silks so naturalistic that flowers, feathers, and ribbons seemed to float off the fabric rather than sit within it. At 126 inches long, this border would have framed a much larger panel of silk, likely destined for a royal or aristocratic interior, perhaps as wall hangings or upholstery. The year 1770 places it squarely in the Louis XVI transitional moment, when French decorative arts were beginning to move from the exuberant curves of Rococo toward a cleaner, more architectural Neoclassical sensibility. De la Salle's other surviving works from this period, including panels held at the Art Institute of Chicago, show his signature naturalistic botanicals rendered in satin weave with brocading wefts, achieving a three-dimensional quality that no painter working on flat canvas could quite replicate. A border like this one would have required months of preparation just to program the loom, and the result was considered as prestigious as any painting hanging in the same room.