It’s almost Christmas for the Fabric Printing Museum in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). The museum, which has a unique collection of prints in the world but which reported extensive looting of its collections in 2018, was returned on Monday 76 Hermès scarves recovered by the judicial police. “This restitution brings us hope, the hope that other squares will return, that other objects from the collection will return, even if this figure (of 76 scarves) may seem insignificant compared to the sum of what has disappeared,” reacted Alexia Fontaine, the scientific director of the museum.
Hundreds of squares, stolen books
According to her, 440 of the 515 Hermès squares available to the museum disappeared between 2013 and 2017. Added to this is the disappearance of 4,353 books of works (bringing together thousands of textile samples), out of the 5,388 in the museum’s reserves. museum.
These scarves, made between 1946 and 2015, mainly came from donations from Hermès. “This reveals the privileged links between art and fashion, and the luxury sector’s interest in a museum like ours, which has preserved the history of textile printing for 250 years,” continued Alexia Fontaine. .
“And from the point of view of the history of textile printing, Hermès squares are at the origin of the Lyon frame technique, allowing high quality prints and then adopted by numerous manufacturers until today,” she explained, to highlight the heritage value of these pieces.
To find them, “we relied on the work of piecing together (inventory) which was carried out within the museum”, declared the head of the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC) , Colonel Hubert Percie du Sert. It was “the identification of the parts and the monitoring of commercial exchanges between the suspected persons”, which allowed the investigators to recover them. “This shows the importance of inventorying and securing these collections, since we are then able to trace these objects throughout their life, or in any case at each transaction where they are detectable,” added the officer.
Known “internal” thefts
The thefts, committed over several years, had been reported within the museum. “I can tell you that it was known internally,” assured Alexia Fontaine, who arrived at the establishment in 2022. But the affair had to become known, with the report of a famous auction house who had received certain objects appearing to come from these collections, so that a complaint was finally filed in 2018.
A preliminary investigation and then a judicial investigation were opened, entrusted to the Mulhouse judicial police and the OCBC. “Investigations are still ongoing,” the Mulhouse prosecutor’s office said on Monday.
The museum’s former conservation delegate, Jean-François Keller, was indicted. He admitted the theft of Gallé vases as well as around a hundred Hermès squares. Investigators established a link between the latter and “a company based in the United States which purchased certain stolen works”, according to a press release from the OCBC, which also found traces of commercial exchanges with England, Germany or Switzerland. “Some buyers knew where these objects came from,” said Colonel Hubert Percie du Sert.
Two previous restitutions, of 44 then nine books of works, have already taken place in 2021 and 2022. One of these books is currently presented as part of the exhibition “Quel construction”, which shows the identification work of pieces from the collections carried out since the revelation of the thefts. Already in 2019, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs had given notice to the museum to “take the necessary measures to remedy the dangers faced by the collections”, an extremely rare procedure. It then decided to carry out inventory work on the most degraded collections, with the State then becoming the project owner.