Christmas fabrics in Mulhouse

On the occasion of Mulhouse’s 800th anniversary, the 2024 Christmas fabric pays tribute to Mulhouse’s rich past, characterised in particular by great industrial and textile inventions. The designer, Marie-Jo Gebel, honours the city’s historical heritage by taking inspiration from the ‘Indiennes’ collection at the Museum of Printed Fabrics with patterns from Mulhouse’s Mieg factory. The interlaced ribbons invite us to travel back in time between the Middle Ages and the 18th century, while symbols from Mulhouse’s history adorn the background of the fabric: the city’s coat of arms, the wheel of the watermill, the automobile and railway industries…

In 2023, the Christmas fabric “L’Envol Bleu” takes us to a winter garden of icy colours. Frost settles on plant volutes, creating lacy ferns and magnifying the warm colours of rowan berries and hellobore flowers. Birds bring movement to a natural setting frozen by cold, ice and snowflakes.

Inspired by the collections of the Museum of Printed Fabrics, designer Marie-Claire Z. Erny’s motifs are composed of a large plant frieze set against a background of small leaves.

Carried by a message of hope, the 2022 Christmas fabric “Scintillance” guides us towards the dawn and the light of day after two years marked by the health crisis. The designer, Caroline Lux, combines shooting stars and constellations with ribbons inspired by the collections of the Musée de l’Impression sur Étoffes. She plays with shades of red and golden motifs that give a soft, warm glow to the starry sky.

Inspired by the Japanese collection of the Museum of Printed Fabrics in Mulhouse, from a woolen muslin printed in a mixed technique with katagami (a kind of stencil) and brushes, the artist Marie Jo Gebel, commissioned by the City of Mulhouse, created the fabric Haïku, poésie d’hiver.

The museum’s collection of Japanese fabrics illustrates the close ties between Alsace and Japan and bears witness in all eras to the fascination for Japanese textile art among Alsatian industrialists.

The 2020 Christmas fabric, created by Marie-Jo Gebel, is a tribute to the artistic creativity and technical innovation of the Mulhouse factories of the late 19th century.

The designer draws her inspiration from fabrics, from the archives of the Museum of Printed Fabrics, dating from the years 1887 and 1888 that reveal large flowering bouquets with many colors.

A rendering of 16 different colors – including gold – implemented with only 12 cylinders, recalling the decorative arts of the late nineteenth century and the fashion for rose gardens in gardens. By revisiting truer-than-life bouquets of flowers, the lush vegetation that seems to escape from the fabrics, and arabesque motifs, essential decorations for furniture prints, Marie-Jo Gebel offers a new demonstration of the creativity of Mulhouse’s textile heritage, highlighted in 2020.

With patterns and colors specially created each year by designer Marie-Jo Gebel, the 2019 Christmas fabric sounds like a symphony. Entitled “Christmas Sonata”, this fabric is inspired by two elements: one is a model on paper by Thierry Mieg made in Mulhouse in the 1860s whose pattern represents an angel playing the flute. Indeed, it is in the 18th century that angels appear in fabrics and decorative art, and this from the first textile prints, becoming a fashion phenomenon from 1850 to 1880. The other is a visual Alsatian dating from the same period and unknown manufacture presenting hearts. The whole forms a harmonious fabric between the angels and the links of the heart, whose melody is in tune with the magic of Christmas.

For this 2018 “Hommage” collection fabric, Marie-Jo Gebel was inspired by the refinement of the first cashmere patterns that appeared around 1810 in India and Europe. These fabrics were woven with this textile fiber of incomparable softness.

Early in the 19th century, Alsace and England printed cashmere patterns, mainly cotton squares but also handkerchiefs and from 1840 the famous shawls. All these palmettes were distributed throughout the world. It is the testimony of the excellence of the work of the designers, chemists, engravers and printers of Mulhouse. With this 2018 fabric, we pay “Tribute” to them.

It is the archive of engravings published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, presenting the ornaments of different architectural styles that inspired Marie-Jo Gebel for this 2017 collection. Scrolls, arabesques, acanthus flowers, lilies and other cabochons form an elegant whole, highlighted by a blue background and raised with gold. A fabric all in refinement and poetry…

The 2016 fabric is inspired by two 1770 indiennes, made in Nantes and kept at the Musée de l’impression sur étoffes. These paper prints, representing subtle floral interlacing, have been reworked with great finesse by Marie-Jo Gebel and block printed on linen and cotton to illuminate Christmas 2016.

The 2015 fabric was inspired by two antique designs preserved in the Museum of Fabric Printing in Mulhouse: one German Art Nouveau design (1900), the other printed in Mulhouse by the Thierry Mieg factory in 1870.

By combining these two designs, Marie-Jo Gebel has created a delicate fabric, full of elegance.

Back to the roots for the 2014 dress. The fabric combines the two traditional colors of Christmas (red and green) and presents a refined and luminous frieze, rich in volutes. The designer, Marie-Jo Gebel, was inspired by a pattern printed in Mulhouse at the end of the 19th century; which she redesigned and reworked by hand, before composing this delicate and festive.

This classic and refined fabric distills Christmas ornaments (baubles, candles…) and old-fashioned toys (sled, wooden horse) on a red background dotted with stars. A familiar universe signed Marie-Jo Gebel, which recalls the Christmas of childhood.

This mischievous and greedy collection is signed Natalia Moutinho. At first glance, large hearts symbolize the warmth and sharing of Christmas. To give them shape, cookie cutters of the famous Alsatian Christmas cakes (the bredala) nested in each other. A wink in memory of the family preparations of these small cakes, whose recipes are passed on from generation to generation. Bredalas that we offer and share generously throughout Advent.

Designer Nathalie Moutinho pays tribute to the famous Andrinople red, whose manufacturing secret was fiercely defended by the Turks. The pattern draws its inspiration from Indian women, the source of European textile printing and the rise of Mulhouse in the 19th century. The contemporary motifs (pine cones, fir branches and stylized ribbons) are arranged in an antique manner, evoking the first prints imported into Europe at the end of the 16th century.