In 1859, Désiré Petit sets up in Paris a business of furnishing fabric. In 1872, he founded with his son Albert a company for creating and editing high-end furnishing fabrics, exclusively produced in France.

On 1st October 1891, the Maison moves in 23 rue du Mail, Paris 75002 in a building with an Eiffel-type structure specially designed « for the trade of fabrics ». Nowadays, the Edmond Petit showroom still welcomes you at this historical address. In 1950 and thanks to an employee who was an upholsterer and was fond of theatre, the company develops and launches its first flame-retardant velvets for stage curtains and seats. Since 1960, the range of FR and technical fabrics has been growing and the Maison sets up a sewing workshop specifically designed for the needs of show business and of the exhibition setting professionals.

Closer to us, Edmond Petit takes over the collection of prints of the famous Maison Hamot, founded in 1762 and starts editing again its acclaimed designs, among which the Madeleine Castaing range, both in a textile version and as wallpaper. Today, Edmond Petit offers a wide variety of furnishing fabrics and since 5 years, in collaboration with a French printer, Edmond Petit also offers a collection of exquisite wallpapers and panoramicals.

Under the reign or King Louis XVth, the founder s of Maison Hamot were Master Weavers of silk in Lyon, and fabric traders in Paris, like Seguin or Michel, who one can considered as the founding fathers of this illustrious Maison. Not known by the general public, this Maison was one of the patented suppliers of the Royal Household, under all regimes; from clearly identified archived orders of fabric for the palace of Versailles or the Tuileries Palace, under Louis XVIth and Napoleon ist, until the Elysée Palace and Grand Trianon, under the Presidency of General de Gaulle.
Following the death of the owner of Maison Hamot, Jean-François Petit bought in 2000, the textile part of the company. Today, the fame of the Hamot collection is wider than a few fabric Specialists. The archive ranges from 15th until 18th century and it consists of prestigious intricate silk fabrics, made on hand looms by the most prestigious Lyon silk houses of the time. This archive is an extraordinary source of inspiration for the decorators of today in search for a heritage fabric to be produced again.

Madeleine Castaing (1894-1992) was the first French Decorator to become famous abroad. The gathered so many archives of fabric, wallpaper, engraving that she created with the help of her friend Francis Hamot her own collection of fabrics and rugs. She would sell these from her Paris shop. When Francis Hamot died, Maison Edmond Petit bought the fabric collection of Maison Hamot together with Madeleine Castaing’s range. Her fabrics and wallpapers are now available worldwide.

Madeleine Castaing loved to mix Napoleon III style with Regency, Directoire style with Biedermeier, in a move of renewal. She would stand out thanks to her mix of styles. She goth her inspiration primarily from neoclassical aesthetics, to which whe would add her personal touch : a hint of Marcel Proust’s love of the past and definitely a French spirit. She was almost more of a Psychologist and a Historiant han a Decorator. Madeleine would take her inspiration into her customers’ desires, getting to know them privately to transform their homes.
« I decorate houses like others would write poetry », she used to repeate. Madeleine Castaing was always telling a story through her choiceof objects, fabrics, furniture and the way she would arrange these together.

She was a friend of Picasso, Modigliani and Chaim Soutine whom she became the patron of. Soutine lived many years in her house of Lèves, close to Chartres. In this mansion, Madame Castaing would host artists and socialites of her time : Cendrars, Satie, Maurice Sachs, Jean Cocteau … The latter even commissioned her to decorate his house in Milly-la-Forêt. She mixed great palms and leopard print to infuse an air of traveler and adventurer to the house and eventually turned his bedroom into a cabinet of curiosities.

Her favorite colors : black, green that she loved dearly because it allows « the outside inside ». The famous Castaing blue, a mix of sky blue and turquoise, is her true signature colour. It is also the colour of Marcelin’s eyes, the man of her life. She also used stonger colors like reds, mustard paired with black to which she would add up a leopard print.

The Castaing style has become a style on its own in the history of French decoration. Her fabrics and wallpaper designs are listed in the collections of the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts (Le Louvre).