80 SOMME. ABBEVILLE. Action de F500. black, buff. #4000. No 2068. Heavy central fold with repaired splits. Also several edge-tears, mostly outside the printed part of the share and repaired with old-style tape. The royal factory of Abbeville can be considered as one of the very first textile factories in the World. On13 October 1665 the French king Louis XIV (the famous Sun King) ordered his Finance Minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), to set up the Royal Fine Cloth Factory of Abbeville. He brought in the family van Rabais, Dutch weavers from Zeeland, Holland, to create the manufacture. They created, for the first time, an integrated industry, and employed a staff of 2500 workers, including 250 weavers. In 1849 the company was taken over by the textile manufacturer J. Randoing and in 1854/55 it was converted into a joint stock company. Some of the buildings survive, even after severe damage in World War II (as does the nearby château of the van Rabais family). Our offer is an initial founders share from 1855, which is a graphic masterpiece as thevignettes represent the initial founders as well as the factories, with a detailed representation of the spinning, weaving, dyeing, combing, carding and other machines. The vignette in the left upper corner shows King Louis XIV, the right upper corner shows Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the vignette at the lower left represents the new founder and industrialist J. Randoing (who has signed the share). This is certainly one of the best French scripophily pieces: very pretty, a good early date, a company witha lot of history, and extremely rare, as one would expect.