Paule Marrot
Les Tulipes, fabric designed by Paul Marrot, c.1940. Image courtesy of Natural Curiosities.
Paule Marrot (1902-1987) was a French textile designer, best known for her charming fabrics depicting the natural world. Although she hasn’t perhaps received the acclaim she deserves internationally, she was a household name throughout France in the mid-twentieth century. When designer André Arbus presented her with the Légion d’honneur there in 1952, he summarised her style beautifully: “you paint with your heart the flowers of the fields, love, youth, the seasons, everything that is wonderful in life.”
Fete, hand painted design for a textile by Paul Marrot. Image courtesy of Natural Curiosities.
Painted design for a fabric, date unknown. Image courtesy of Natural Curiosities.
Born in Bordeaux and raised in Paris, Marrot grew up surrounded by artists and musicians. It’s said that whilst holidaying at her aunt’s house on the French Riviera, she plucked up the courage to show her paintings to her aunt’s elderly neighbour - none other than the eminent impressionist painter Renoir. He was encouraging (thankfully) and she enrolled at Paris’ L'école des Arts Décoratifs, where she practised painting, engraving and textile design - skills that she would become the bedrock of her creative practice in the decades to come.
By her late teens, Marrot was hand printing joyful textiles under her own steam and attracted the attention of several notable artists, including Raoul Dufy and Paul Poiret, who were designing similarly bold floral fabrics. Aged just 23, she scooped up a gold medal at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris - the spectacular exhibition famed for disseminating Modernist styles across the globe and often considered the birthplace of Art Deco (if I had a time machine I’d be sure to visit).
Marrot’s winsome textiles caught the eye of industrial textile manufacturer Jean Schlumberger in 1932. It was the start of a long and fruitful collaboration; Marrot supplied the designs, which were then printed in Alsace and distributed internationally.
Poppies, design for a fabric by Paule Marrot, date unknown. Image courtesy of Natural Curiosities.
Paule Marrot working as design and colour consultant for Renault, 1960
After the war, she garnered a spate of illustrious American admirers keen to bedeck their homes with her floral fabrics, including Jackie Kennedy who decorated an entire room of the White House around Les Tulipes (it’s not the first time the White House has got a mention in this newsletter; Marion Dorn also designed a rug for the diplomatic reception room). It seems Marrot had a strong business sense as well as artistic flair; from 1953 - 1965 she worked as design consultant for Renault, creating vibrant colour palettes for their car bodies and interior trims, which she complained were “uniformly sombre”. Hear hear!
Her archive of designs has been acquired, not by a museum, but by various brands keen to keep her designs in production; unfortunately this means that the dates and details of her collection aren’t available. Many of her designs can now be found as pricey prints sold by Natural Curiosities and licensed to retail giants such as Anthropologie. It's no surprise to me that her joyful botanical prints remain popular today; they are imbued with a rare timeless quality that is happily trend-free.
Red Sea, design for fabric, date unknown. Image courtesy of Natural Curiosities.