Christophe Philippe Oberkampf

Historically, museums have often prioritized textiles that look new over those showing signs of wear. These objects arrived on the same day in 1981, as part of the same donation. The largest piece of the textile was given a new number, 81.131B, while the irregularly sized and repaired pieces were left unlabeled, then forgotten in storage. That these scraps had been saved and carefully repaired speaks to how highly work by Jean-Baptiste Huet and the Oberkampf factory was prized, both for its visual appeal and technological innovation.