Threads of Empire: Textile Heritage Reimagined for Modern Rooms
Turnell and Gigon curates a collection of storied fabrics, from classical Louis XVI stripes to a celebrated pattern once favoured by Catherine the Great, each carrying the weight of centuries into contemporary interiors.
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The most enchanting furnishing fabrics often arrive laden with provenance, their patterns speaking of the hands that drew them, the palaces they graced, and the particular moment when beauty seemed to demand something ethereal. Turnell and Gigon, the discerning London textile merchant, understands this genealogy of elegance with an almost archaeological precision.
Within their meticulously assembled collection rest fabrics bearing the signatures of design houses whose archives stretch back generations. Edmond Petit and Charles Burger represent two such lineages, their offerings spanning from the disciplined geometry of Toile Bagatelle, a Louis XVI inspired composition of stripe and check, to something far more storied: Les Perdrix, a design whose beauty seems to contain entire centuries within its weave.
Les Perdrix emerged from the drawing board of Philippe de Lasalle in the early 1770s, that supremely fecund moment when French textile design reached its zenith. Originally conceived as silk brocade for the Palais Bourbon, the pattern subsequently adorned the private chambers of Catherine the Great within the Peterhof Palace, where Russian imperial taste found itself captivated by French artistry. Such pedigree cannot be invented; it can only be inherited and honoured.
The Continuum of Craftsmanship
When the French textile house Hamot first translated Les Perdrix onto cotton percale for broader consumption, something essential was preserved: the integrity of the original vision married to practicality. Founded in 1762, Hamot carried forward an unbroken tradition of textile excellence, one that Edmond Petit himself recognised sufficiently to acquire the house in 1998, ensuring that its historic archive and manufacturing knowledge would continue to serve contemporary interiors with the same rigour that distinguished its earlier incarnations.
This is textile curation at its finest: not the mere accumulation of pretty things, but the careful stewardship of designs whose legitimacy rests upon their appearance in palaces and their manufacture by houses whose very names signify centuries of technical mastery. When one selects such fabrics for a room, one is not simply choosing a colour or pattern. One is bringing into one’s domestic sphere the aesthetic judgment of the Enlightenment, the imperial taste of Russia’s greatest empress, and the patient skill of artisans who understood that fabric is architecture for the wall, sculpture for the window, poetry for the space where light gathers and settles.
Turnell and Gigon’s collection represents this philosophy made tangible: fabrics that refuse to age because they were never contemporary to begin with. They simply are, enduring and beautiful, waiting for the discerning eye that recognises quality as something that transcends the tyranny of fashion.
Imagery courtesy of Turnell and Gigon (@turnellandgigon).
