Franco-Indian Textiles & Crafts Exhibition | What is Brewing

From December 4, 2024 to January 7, 2025, the Mobilier national presents the exhibition “What is brewing”. Stories woven between India and France, a project dedicated to artistic and technical exchanges between the two countries through textiles. The event brings together several major players: 19M, the artistic crafts center founded by Maison CHANEL, the French Embassy in India via the Villa Swagatam program, as well as designer Christian Louboutin, who supervises the artistic direction, scenography and brings references drawn from his experience in India.

Curation is provided by Mayank Mansingh Kaul, guest curator, responsible for the conceptual narrative, organization of sections and selection of works. On the occasion of the exhibition, Lesage Interiors, a resident house of 19M specializing in embroidery and textile decoration, is organizing a participatory workshop from December 4 to 7, 2025 around the creation of an embroidered Indigo Tree of Life. Designed as a collective project, it allows visitors to discover embroidery techniques while contributing to a common work inspired by historical exchanges between India and Europe.

The course is organized around seven successive spaces: the Anteroom, White Canvases, Indian Fashions, The Golden Thread, Indian Chic, Sculpting the Bodies and finally, A Universal Language.

The exhibition opens with L’Antichambre, a space which shows artistic and commercial exchanges between India and France. It is a reproduction of an 18th century French apartment, entirely covered with an Indian textile. Christian Louboutin uses this decor to immerse the visitor in history thanks to a traditional 18th century motif, made especially for the exhibition by the artisans of House of Kandadu. They worked entirely by hand, using ancient techniques like block printing and natural dyes. The exterior of this room takes shapes inspired by Indian nomadic tents. This exterior is covered in toile de Jouy, a French fabric that originally comes from Indian printing techniques.

The next section, White Canvases, gets back to basics: fibers and threads. Presented without color, they recall the different meanings of white in Indian and French cultures. There you can find Indian cotton muslins spun and woven by hand, which changed women’s fashion in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, but also embroidery, ornaments and French artisanal lace.

With Indian Fashions, the exhibition looks back at the arrival in France, from the 17th century, of hand-painted and printed cotton fabrics. These fabrics, first called palampore or chintz, then inspired the creation of “indian”, a type of textile that has become very popular in France. Their floral and plant motifs combine the styles of the two cultures. The works presented show how these fabrics were used in clothing and interiors of the time, and also explain the origin of the French paisley pattern, inspired by Kashmiri shawls.

In Le fil d’or, the visitor discovers brocades, precious fabrics woven by hand with silk and metallic threads. Lyon has long been the main French center for these textiles, and the invention of the Jacquard loom in the 19th century transformed their production worldwide. The exhibition shows the influence of this innovation on Indian textiles, particularly in Varanasi, through works that combine tradition and contemporary creations.

Indian chic begins at the foot of the gallery stairs, with a colorful textile installation inspired by the sari. This traditional garment, more than two thousand years old, is reinterpreted here by the Indian brand Raw Mango, known for modernizing the sari while working with numerous artisans. This section connects the influences between French haute couture and Indian fashion, and shows how textiles help shape the body. The large panels featured in the room come from The Flowers We Grew project, created by the Chanakya School of Crafts with artist Rithika Merchant.

In Sculpting Bodies, the exhibition focuses on artists who use textile craftsmanship in a contemporary approach. The works show how textiles can become sculptural and express social and political issues. The techniques used are varied, and artists, from India and France, explore the body, texture, volume or drape. We find works by Mrinalini Mukherjee, Simone Pheulpin, Sheila Hicks, the Chanakya workshop collective, and even Jeanne Vicerial.

Finally, the exhibition ends with A Universal Language, a living room inspired by India and entirely covered in denim. This fabric, created in Nîmes in the 19th century with indigo from India, is today produced mainly in this country. This space invites the visitor to reflect on the lasting links between India and France. We see in particular the tapestry After Paris by the Indian artist Viswanadhan, produced at Gobelins, and a reminder of the work of Le Corbusier in India, particularly in Chandigarh.