Pierre I Mercier
Pierre Mercier (the side labeled "I" is used to distinguish him from his son of the same name; * to 1650 in Aubusson (Creuse) , † 1729 in Dresden ) was a Huguenot Tapissier artists and operator of a tapestry - Manufaktur in Berlin .
Life
Pierre I Mercier came from a tapestry family in Aubusson. There his father Jean Mercier (* around 1625) ran a tapestry together with his cousin Ysaak Barraband, the father of Jean I Barraband . The origin of carpet knitting in Aubusson goes back to immigrant Flemish carpet weavers. The city flourished after Colbert awarded Aubusson the title of Royal Manufactory in 1665.
As a well-known carpet maker, Pierre Mercier left his homeland in late 1685 / early 1686 for reasons of faith . He followed the Potsdam Edict of November 6, 1685 with which the Great Elector invited French Protestants to Brandenburg . He settled in the French colony of Berlin. Mercier was married to Marie Biennouvienne from Aubusson († February 28, 1740 in Berlin). Two sons are known from their marriage: Pierre II Mercier, who later became a tapestry and succeeded his father, and Pierre Gabriel Mercier, who became an engraver. In the register of persons of the French colony as of December 31, 1700, both Mercier and his brother-in-law Barraband are named as residents of Friedrichstadt . The Mercier and Barraband families are beyond Berlin u. a. connected with the Garrigue and Gaertner families from Magdeburg .
Pierre I Mercier died in Dresden in 1729 , where he had built a new life from 1713.
Act
Shortly after his arrival in Berlin, on November 7, 1686, Mercier received a patent for the production of knitted carpets from the Great Elector . He then opened a knitted carpet manufacture together with his brother-in-law Jean I Barraband in Schloss Monbijou in Berlin. It traded under the name Mercier & Barraband. This manufactory produced tapestries of the highest quality with gold , silver , silk and wool , which were used to decorate the electoral and later the royal residences. Under the splendor of loving Electors or King Friedrich I / III. (from 1688 to 1713) the manufactory experienced its first heyday.
Johannes Fischer writes: " ... Jean Barraband from Nègrepelisse in Languedoc ... who ran a tapestry factory in Monbijou Castle in Berlin together with his brother-in-law Mercier, which delivered 6 artistic tapestries, gifts from the Berlin French Colony to the Elector Friedrich III . to glorify the war acts of his father, (the Great Elector), the patron of the colony, which today form a main treasure of the Berlin Palace. "
The designs for this series of carpets came from the royal court painter Rutger von Langerfeld . The carpets appeared in 1693.
The death of Mercier's partner Jean I Barraband in 1709 and the transition to his son Jean II Barraband obviously went smoothly for the manufactory. In contrast, Mercier left Berlin shortly after the death of King Frederick I (1713), when under his son, Frederick William I , the soldier king , the funds for jewelry and decor of the castles were drastically cut in favor of military expenses. He left the Berlin manufactory to his partner Barraband and went to Dresden. He spent the last years of his life there near the lavishly run court of Elector Friedrich August I of Saxony and King of Poland.
The Berlin-based picture weaver manufactory founded by Pierre Mercier continued to exist for a long time. One of his famous successors was, besides Jean II Barraband, Charles Vigne.
literature
- Ed. Muret: History of the French Colony in Brandenburg-Prussia. Büchsenstein, Berlin, 1885, p. 46 and 322 ( digitized version ).
- Paul Seidel : The production of tapestries in Berlin. In: Yearbook of the Royal Prussian Art Collections Volume 12, Issue 3, 1891, pp. 137–155.
- Franziska Windt: Jean II Barraband - tapestry “The audience with the Emperor of China”. Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 2000.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Johannes Fischer: The French Colony of Magdeburg . In: Magdeburger Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben No. 22, 1942, p. 150.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mercier, Pierre |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mercier, Pierre I |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1650 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Aubusson (Creuse) |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1729 |
| Place of death | Dresden |