Ever since the late seventeenth century, French producers, supported by their government, have made a commitment to good design, backed by a substantial investment in the education of designers. Schools were established in France in the eighteenth century, and manufacturers paid their graduates twice what they were paid in Britain.(5) Lyon generally purchased its textile designs from Paris. It was superior design that kept French products marketable despite the rapid development of mass production in nineteenth-century England. It was superior design that created some of the most memorable textiles ever woven, such as the legendary French silks used by Worth or the Lyon furnishing silks purchased by the Vanderbilts for their "summer cottage," The Breakers in Newport [fig. 148]. By the early twentieth century, however, critics and producers were concerned that French textiles might not be able to maintain their momentum. French weavers were becoming alarmed as the American industry grew, and they also feared competition from producers in Germany and Austria.(6) Anna Tirocchi's forays into the French textile market therefore took place at a critical time for the fast-expanding industry. The battle for French superiority would be fought against the backdrop of general unease in the French design world, of nationalistic desires to develop a truly modern French style, and of emerging modernism and internationalism in the art world.

At the turn of the century, some French designers of textiles and decorative arts were still producing copies of earlier styles, while at the same time artists and dealers such as Siegfried Bing were promoting art nouveau as the modern French style. In a challenge to art nouveau, German and Viennese workshops were developing their own contemporary styles. Founded in 1897 with a roster of artists in many media, Munich's Vereinigten Werkstätten fur Kunst im Handwerk (United Workshops for Art in Handwork) used machine technology to produce objects in the new German Jugendstil, based on the British arts and crafts movement aesthetic of simplicity and appropriateness. Members of the Vienna Secession movement, also founded in 1897, were influenced by William Morris, Walter Crane, and Charles Voysey and also adopted the British aesthetic for their handcrafted products. Characterized by what the French called an "elegant eclecticism," architects and designers created functional modern buildings that reflected their destined use and employed ordinary materials in judicious ways. In the decorative arts, an interest in pattern, flatness, and abstraction was applied to textile design before 1900 with many striking results.