A little piece of Hermès History

Up until about 2000 Hermès produced some scarves on a jacquard silk fabric.  Most famous perhaps is the Napoleon scarf with it's bees woven into the weave of the silk.  Bees because that was Napoleon's emblem and I wonder if also because traditionally bees are said to achieve the impossible?
Napoleon 1995

I have been lucky enough to acquire 7 scarves featuring a jacquard silk - lucky because you can no longer buy them from Hermès themselves as the silk is too expensive to produce these days. 

I have 4 Carnevale de Venise/Fetes Venitiennes and these feature a lute and mandolin in the jacquard - Hermès usually reflect a feature of the scarf design in the jacquard.

Fetes Venitiennes

Carnevale de Venise

Carnevale de Venise x 2

L'Instruction du Roi features little horsemen again reflecting the design and I really like this one!

My final scarf is a Christmas scarf called Joies d'Hiver and this shows Victorian skaters and, no surprises, the jacquard is skating couples which you can see in the photo below:

 and here a close up of the jacquard

It would be wonderful if Hermès would reintroduce the jacquard silk as they sell lots of other scarves in what are (IMHO) equally expensive fabrics!

If you would like to find out more about these lovely scarves I found a great web page HERE which gives a background to the jacquard weave and a list of the designs issued by Hermès.