Antique Soap Rugs - In the early 17th century, a weaver named Pierre Dupont traveled to the Levant. Upon his return, he claimed to have discovered the technique of making Turkish rugs. Oriental carpets were extremely expensive in the Bourbon era, and a French manufacture that could create the same type of carpet could lower the price significantly. Henri de France - the reigning monarch of the time - took advantage of Dupont's skills and created a workshop for him in the Louvre. In 1627, King Louis XIII founded a factory for Dupont and his apprentice, Simon Lourdet, on the site of an old soap factory in the 16th arrondissement of Paris (also known as the Quai de Chaillot). The name Savonnerie was born from the French word "savon". Dupond and Lourdet worked together, weaving carpets with a royal patent for the king and other nobles, until they fell out and parted ways. Lourdet went to Chaillot and Dupond to the Louvre workshop, although both continued to make Savonnerie.

Savonnerie antique rugs exemplify the formal grace and elegance of European classical aesthetics. Like the Aubusson tapestries, the Savonneries were born in France when European taste turned away from Oriental rugs for a time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Named after the neighboring factories that produced soap, the Savonnerie carpets shared with those of Aubusson the neoclassical taste for flowers and soft colors of which the color Ivory predominated.