Home – Manufacture Prelle

It is the descendant of a company which already had a reputation in 1752 and is the oldest silk furnishing fabric factory in Lyons, being the only one to have remained a family business for five generations. Since it was first created, it has woven silk cloth for palaces and castles such as Versailles and the Louvre. Today, it is able to reproduce them identically.

It is also the only one to have kept its original workshop, built in 1880 on the famous hill of Croix Rousse in Lyons, the historical center of Lyon's silk manufacturers. There, the descendants of the hand-loom weavers were able to recreate the gold and silver brocade in Louis XIVs bed chamber in Versailles (29 years of research and weaving at the rate of three centimeters a day), the polychrome, flock velvet of Amalienborg castle in Copenhagen, which was the sumptuous "diplomatic gift" given, in 1752, by Louis XV to Comte Moltke, a high official of the Danish Court, and the relief peacock feather brocade of the curtains and wall-hangings in Marie Antoinette’s bed chamber in Versailles.

These archives (original samples, drawings and

manufacturing formulas), which were painstakingly assembled over more than two centuries, form an incomparable source of documentation which all museum and castle curators from all over the world come to consult as soon as a historical monument is to be restored. The treasures they contain include unique items which do not exist anywhere else.

The strong point of the Prelle manufacture is to have managed to live together several generations of weaving loom, from the hand looms, which are the only ones on which certain flock velvets and silk or gold and silver brocades can be woven, right up to the most modern computerised looms. To house these electronically controlled, high performance, computer-aided looms, the old Lyons workshops were refitted.

A standard bearer of the French luxury trade PRELLE et Cie are proud to offer their services bases on the experience of over 200 years, to a clientele to whom the pursuit of excellence and the maintenance of the highest standards, remain a concern of primary importance.

Prelle Manufacture, silk fabrics since 1752

Prelle Manufacture in France

Prelle Manufacture in the United States

Prelle Manufacture on the Internet