Pierre Frey, founded in 1935 by the textile designer for which it was named, is a French interior design company run as a family business, which designs and produces fabrics, wallcoverings, carpets and traditional French furniture. Over time, the firm has acquired other brands with an excellent heritage: Braquenié, Boussac, Fadini Borghi and Le Manach.
The encounter with Zuber was almost inevitable, a producer of wallpaper whose history begins in 1797 at Rixheim near Mulhouse, the birthplace of wallpaper. The company has been owned by the same family for almost 200 years. Today Zuber is the only producer that has conserved the tradition of block printing of panoramic patterns.
This techniques dates back to the 18th century, using woodcut prints on backgrounds of hand-brushed paper, achieving exceptional results of refinement and softness, with deep matte hues.
Each wooden panel is carved with a relief design to permit printing of just one color and just one part of the design. To print a single set, from 800 to 2000 pieces are required. The Zuber archives contain over 130,000 panels of pearwood carved in the 19th century, a true treasure trove listed as historical heritage.
When Gisèle Chalaye acquired the factory in 1985, she wanted to preserve this unique know-how, resolving to select – when the right moment came along – “a buyer that would embody the grandeur of the past, but also the vision of a bright future.” With this spirit, Patrick Frey, son of the founder and creative director of Maison Pierre Frey, explains: “I am not the owner of these historic companies, but just an intermediary to make them better known around the world.”
Among the collections still produced today, Zuber offers Vues de Suisse, designed in 1804 by Pierre Mongin, which has a special place in history, as does the first panoramic wallpaper, Vues du Brésil, created in 1829 by Jean-Julien Deltil, an artist famous for his vistas, or the famous Vues d’Amérique du Nord from 1834, donated to Jacqueline Kennedy in and around 1960 to cover the diplomatic reception room of the White House.
