A pair of manuscript broadsides or pattern cards of Londrine Seconds

(TRADE SAMPLES) EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH TEXTILES. A pair of manuscript broadsides or pattern cards of Londrine Seconds swatches. Languedoc, France: mid to late 18th century. 24 mounted textile samples on t cards. Important documentation for the historian of textiles, all in excellent condition. These two broadsides come from a French manufacturer of Londrine, fulled woolen cloth manufactured specially in Languedoc in imitation of West England broadcloths, and used in the Levant trade...the Moors always entertai a favorable opinion of English manufactures, and the French, to humor them, g their cloth the name of Londras, wishing to make the Moors believe it was manufactured in London." (Montgomery, Textiles in America, 1984). The first is 19 x 13 3/4 inches and titled "Londrine Seconde" and on which ar mounted 12 large colorful swatches (2 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches) each with a stock number written in ink. The second is titled "Fabrique Royale de la Bastide Rouge Peyre, Londrine Second," same measurements as above with 12 different swatches and stock numbers. Government regulations for premieres Londres and secondes Londres are given i both Savary des Brusions and Diderot. Finer Spanish wool and a greater numbe of threads per inch in the warp accounted for (the) superior quality of the premiers. Montgomery states that there are letters in the Metropolitan Museu of Art with swatches of Londrina Seconde in bright colors from Carcassone and pattern card with eleven swatches of Londrine Secondes dating from the mid-eighteenth century at Colonial Williamsburg. Montgomery concludes by quoting Arthur Young, traveling in France in the late 1780s, observed that th "Londrins, of which at all these towns I took patterns, are a very bright, beautiful, well-dyed bright cloth that have had, deservedly, from quality and price, the greatest success in the Levant; I saw the wool they are made of, a should not have known it from a good specimen from the South Downs of Sussex. The present examples are particularly appealing as the colors are bright and they both have handsome calligraphic titles. Very rare.