GOBELIN FAMILY,

French family of dyers and clothmakers whose factory became world-famous for its tapestries. Jehan Gobelin died 1476 who ran a factory in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel just southeast of Paris, discovered a scarlet dyestuff and spared no expense to exploit his creation. His descendants seem to have given up dyeing by the end of the 16th century; some of them bought titles of nobility and offices in the financial administration or in royal councils, as did Balthasar Gobelin (d. 1617), seigneur de Brie-Comte-Robert from 1601. The factory, lent to King Henry IV in 1601 and only then devoted to making tapestries, was purchased for King Louis XIV in 1662 and devoted to general upholstery until its closing in 1694. Reopened for tapestry in 1697, it was temporarily closed during the Revolutionary period but was reopened again by Napoleon. Carpets as well as tapestry have been produced since 1826.