In Mulhouse, how a lover of precious fabrics embroidered a destiny

By Laurent Carpentier

Posted today at 02:21

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A large sky blue wool sweater. A white beard collar that makes him look like a character from a Grimm’s tale, or a leprechaun raised on GMOs… A soft look and a sorry voice saying that he apologizes but that, under judicial supervision, he does not can’t speak. We thank him for opening the door. He says : “Thank you for your kindness, sir. “ And, from the street, we watch this castaway hide behind the windows of his little apartment in Cernay, about twenty kilometers from Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin), at the foot of the Vosges.

So it is he, Jean-François Keller, the croquemitaine of the Museum of printing on fabrics in Mulhouse, the “Mise” as everyone calls him in the region? The man who would have disseminated, over the years, the precious collections of drawings, sketches, work boards and fabric samples. Of course, they are not Rembrandts. However, it is an invaluable treasure. Let’s resume …

Three years ago, on March 26, 2018, the Sotheby’s house informed the museum that two Gallé vases – estimated between 100,000 and 200,000 euros – that it was preparing to put up for sale in the name of a buyer who had them acquired on eBay, seem to come from the Mulhouse collections. Unique pieces duly listed, they were indeed purchased by the Industrial Company of Mulhouse, owner of the museum, in 1900, at the Universal Exhibition in Paris.

Initially, therefore, we are faced with a vulgar theft as it regularly happens in museums. However, here is a director who panics… The man in question, Eric Bellargent, is nevertheless considered solid. His teams even say he is authoritarian and angry, viscerally attached to his museum, he who joined it as a caretaker when the building was refurbished in 1996, to climb all the ranks to the director’s chair. It was in 2003.

The “Mise” is an institution in Mulhouse. The Rhine city was built during the industrial revolution on the alliance of textiles and chemicals. Just as there was Lyon and silk, Calais and its lace, Roubaix and its spinning mills, there is Mulhouse, reprocessing and printing cotton. Who says printing, says drawings and pigments. Since the XVIII^e century, local companies have kept all their samples and sketches.

This is how these captains of industry, the Koechlin, the Miegg, the Dolfus, grouped together within the powerful Industrial Society in the defense of their heritage, decided, in 1833, to bring together these collections to make a museum. which is both a memory tool and a source of inspiration for creators.

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