On my tapestry tour with Cresside Collette in France last May, we visited the Museé Dom Robert in Soréze. I posted a video with some thoughts about this visit to Albi, Soréze, and the museum in THIS post from June of 2019. I’d like to show you more of the photos that I took of Dom Robert’s tapestries.
Guy de Chaunac Lanzac, otherwise known as Dom Robert, lived from 1907 to 1997. In 1930 he entered a Benedictine abbey as Brother Robert and became a priest in 1937 and was ordained as Dom Robert.
In 1941 he met Jean Lurcat who inspired Dom Robert to become a tapestry cartoon designer. His tapestries were woven primarily by Tabard and Suzanne Goubely in Aubusson. Though tapestry weavers in the USA might be disappointed to realize that these large-scale tapestries were not woven by the same person who designed them, this is common practice elsewhere in the world even today. Dom Robert was a tapestry cartoon designer, not necessarily a weaver. He clearly understood weaving techniques and his cartoons seem very approachable to me as a tapestry weaver.
His work includes 150 cartoons, mostly woven in Aubusson. Numerous copies of his cartoons were often made and most are in private collections.
“Dom Robert focused all of his work on nature as it came out of the Creator’s hands, free from everything that the human industry adds: horses, flowers, chickens, herbs, ducks ... Naked nature! And he said, “There is only one thing that is right, that is nature. Nature is real, real ””
The first Dom Robert piece I saw on the France trip was in the Lurçat Museum in Angers. It was full of adorable creatures and I was instantly in love.
Dom Robert, Les Enfants de lumiére, 1968, atelier Goubely, Aubusson. 350 x 500 cm. Photographed in the Lurcat Museum in Angers, France.
Les Enfants de lumiére, detail
Les Enfants de lumiére, detail
Les Enfants de lumiére, detail
Fortunately for me, after seeing this one tapestry in Angers, we headed south and were able to visit the museum in Soréze and see so many more. We were staying in Albi, a larger town nearby and took a bus to the museum one afternoon. Soréze is a charming town and if I were to go again, I’d see if I could stay there.
Museé Dom Robert, Soréze, France
The Museé Dom Robert is in the small village of Soréze.
The Museé Dom Robert is a fairly large museum with many of his tapestries on display. I also appreciated the cartoons displayed along with other materials. The quote below describes how Dom Robert himself noted the color changes for the weavers. (Please note that these translations are through google and they aren’t likely completely correct. Whatever the French word for tapestry cartoon is often translated as “cardboard.”)
“Dom Robert will adopt the numbered cardboard technique developed by Jean Lurçat and will remain faithful to him: “My boxes are most generally encrypted, that is to say that each color zone is indicated by a corresponding number or conventional sign. (…) As far as I’m concerned, each color is subdivided into several shades from light to dark and numbered consecutively. In all, around forty shades from around 8 basic colors. In addition to these flat colors, I gladly use mixtures of shades to which we give the name of mottled or quilted, obtained in weaving by mixing on the same flute several threads of different colors. (…) Let us add the work of hatching or threshing, more or less long, translated into a sawtooth, used to obtain passages of tones and more flexible models. “”
Here are some photo examples of how he indicated color changes on the cartoons.
Dom Robert, L’ Arbre d’or (The Golden Tree), 180 x 220 cm, woven atelier Goibely, 1957
Dom Robert, cartoon for L’ Arbre d’or
Dom Robert, L’Herbe haute, atelier Goubely, Aubusson, 1961, 185 x 150 cm
Dom Robert, L’Herbe haute, detail
Dom Robert, L’Herbe haute, detail
Dom Robert tapestry cartoon
Dom Robert tapestry detail
Below are some more photos from the museum and details of tapestries. My apologies that I don’t have exact titles for most of them.
Museé Dom Robert, Soréze, France
Dom Robert tapestry
Detail Dom Robert tapestry
Dom Robert, L’Arbe qui chante, 1950, atelier Tabard, Aubusson, 213 x 176 cm
Dom Robert, L’Arbe qui chante, detail, 1950, atelier Tabard, Aubusson, 213 x 176 cm
Dom Robert, Laudes, atelier Goubely, 300 x 200 cm
Dom Robert, Laudes detail, atelier Goubely, 300 x 200 cm
Here are a few more details for those of you who want to see how the pieces were woven. They were all woven sideways to my knowledge (and likely from the back).
Dom Robert, tapestry detail
Dom Robert, tapestry detail
Dom Robert, tapestry detail
Dom Robert, tapestry detail
Image of Dom Robert from Plein Champ: Autour d’une oeurvre de Dom Robert
The museum also had materials explaining how tapestry is woven. They had one tapestry displayed on a wall with a hole cut in it so you could examine the back. The methods of sewing slits and making vertical lines were similar to what I saw in the ateliers in Aubusson (see my other posts about France for details).
Dom Robert Museum, notes from the weavers at atelier Goubely
Dom Robert Museum, notes from the weavers
The piece below, Canards de Loul was displayed in front of a hole in the wall so you could walk around and see the back.
Dom Robert, Canards de Loul, atelier Goubely, Aubusson, 131 x 144 cm
Dom Robert, Canards de Loul, back, atelier Goubely, Aubusson, 131 x 144 cm
Dom Robert, Canards de Loul, detail back, atelier Goubely, Aubusson, 131 x 144 cm
The Museé Dom Robert has a website here: http://www.domrobert.com/ Google will translate the page for you, but keep in mind that some of the words aren’t quite right. Often a tapestry cartoon is translated as “cardboard” from French to English.
All of the video blogs I did from the France tapestry tour are linked from here: https://rebeccamezoff.com/blog/2019/7/10/all-the-france-tapestry-video-blogs-in-one-place