At the time when Henri IV. founded the manufactory of carpets in the Flemish style he sought to encourage the imitation of the " tapis de Turquie, querins (of Cairo) et persiens et autres, de nouvelle invention, embellis de diverses figures d'animaux et personnages jusqu'ici inconnus." A privilege for this purpose was granted, in 1604, to Jehan Fortier. The same year Pierre du Pont is installed at the Louvre in the capacity of "Tapissier ordinaire en tapis de Turquie et facon du Levant;" there was, therefore, a manufacture of velvet piled tissues also. Still, it was not until the time of Louis XIII., in 1627, that Pierre du Pont, associated with one of his apprentices, obtained a decree approving the establishment of a manufactory of all sorts of carpets and other furniture and works of the Levant, in gold, silver, silk, and wool, for the space of eighteen years. His apprentices were a hundred poor children who had been already kept in the hospitals, and lodged in the house of La Savonnerie, created in 1615 by Marie de Medicis. These children, after six years' work, obtained the right of " maitrise".

The productions of La Savonnerie were condemned from their very destination to disappear before any others; what has become of the immense carpet, composed of ninety-two pieces, which was to furnish the gallery of the Louvre, and which was embellished by trophies, armorial bearings, and allegorical figures? This must evidently have issued from the "querin" and "persien" style.

Nevertheless the "Geographie de Paris," a book published in 1754, again mentions the royal manufactory of La Savonnerie as being established for the imitation of Persian and Turkey carpets. In 1825, the establishment was suppressed, and the workmen employed there were transferred to the Gobelins, where the velvet carpet looms took the place of the low-warp looms transferred to Beauvais.