Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf (1738–1815)

Oberkampf developed one of the earliest large factories in France, printing cotton and linen and later printing wallpaper. As early as 1764 his factory covered an area of nearly 2 ha and ten years later it employed 900 people. He developed mechanization and integrated production from spinning fibres to finished goods.

He was born at Wiesenbach in Bavaria to a family of dyers from Württemberg. His father opened a workshop printing cloth at Aarau in Switzerland and Oberkampf decided at 18 to continue in the same trade by learning engraving at the printing works of Samuel Koechlin and Henry Dollfus in Mulhouse and, two years later, working as a colourist in Paris.

In 1760 he opened a workshop for printing cotton fabric in Jouy-en-Josas, south-west of Paris, with partners from France and Switzerland and members of his family who came to join him. His fabrics gained a great reputation and became known as ‘toile do Jouy’. They were printed initially from engraved wooden blocks but in the early 1770s he introduced engraved copper plates that enabled printing from cylinders. Oberkampf acquired more land in several stages to expand the factory. In 1783, Louis XVI named it as a Royal Manufactory.

Oberkampf branched into wallpaper and devised a machine for printing it in 1785. In 1803, the factory employed 1,300 people and was among the largest in France. He integrated production by building flax-spinning and linen-weaving mills 30-km away at Corbeil-Essonnes in 1810. He established his brother Frédéric with a canvas-printing factory, also in Corbeil.

The disruption of the Napoleonic Wars caused a decline in business and the invasion by Russian and Prussian forces in 1815 resulted in the factory closing. Oberkampf died soon afterwards. His son Émile restarted it after the war. The printing works continued until 1843 and the spinning and weaving factory until 1894. The name Oberkampf is preserved in the Rue Oberkampf and metro station in Paris.