At the end of the seventeenth century, Europe discovered and adopted beautiful cottons from India that were painted with flowers and vividly coloured animals. These cottons were imported by major shipping companies.

However, the stiff competition this brought to traditional silk and cotton manufacturers caused Louis XIV to ban imports of manufactured cloth throughout the country.
In 1759, with the lifting of the ban, many foreigners who had become the only experts in this field moved to France.

Among them, Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, engraver and printer from Württemberg, accepted a proposal from Tavannes to establish a factory and become its director.
Jouy-en-Josas was chosen as the site because of its water quality (the Bievre river) and its proximity to Paris and Versailles.  

Thanks to Oberkampf's ingenuity, the factory became the largest in Europe, employing 1,237 people in 1821.
In the course of his career, Oberkampf benefited from proximity to the Court of Versailles, passed through the turmoil of the Revolution, had stunning prosperity under the Consulate, and was awarded the Legion of Honor by Napoleon himself. However, his business was badly affected by the fall of the Empire.

Formerly a village, Jouy-en-Josas became a town, and would have been ruined by the closure of the factory except that, by the mid-nineteenth century, the popularity of holiday resorts attracted a new clientele to the town.

Oberkampf was the first mayor of Jouy-en-Josas, and his brother-in-law was the first secretary of the town council.

He received famous guests in his home, which became the Town Hall in 1899. 
These guests included the papal nuncio, Marie Antoinette and her children, the empresses Josephine and Marie-Louise, and the great scientists Monge, Laplace, Lagrange, Chaptal, and Gay-Lussac, who were interested in the chemistry used in the manufacture of printed textiles.