S FRANSES was established by Sidney Franses in London in 1909. In the 1920's following the revolution in Russia, the firm was the first to import old Bessarabian carpets to London. It occupied a beautiful gallery at 4 Burlington Gardens, off Old Bond Street, (pictured) and supplied the Royal Household, museums and great collectors.

David Franses took over the company in 1955 and rapidly developed the business. In 1960, he moved to a spacious gallery in Knightsbridge (pictured). Notable sales included a set of four tapestries of the Continents by Judocus de Vos to the Foreign Office in Brussels and a fine Axminster carpet, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. During this period Jack Franses worked in the gallery and later headed the Carpet and Islamic Art department for Sotheby's. In 1967 Michael Franses entered the business. He later set up The Textile Gallery and co-founded Hali Magazine.

Simon Franses joined the firm in 1982 and the company moved to galleries in Jermyn Street. In 1985 the famous Pontremoli workshops in London were acquired, and FRANSES CONSERVATION was established there with a team of eighteen specialists. In 1987 the FRANSES RESEARCH ARCHIVE was founded and Thomas Campbell was appointed Archivist, a post he held for seven years. Dr Campbell then joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1991, after two years' construction, the firm's current purpose-built galleries were opened on the corner of Jermyn Street and Duke Street (pictured). In 1994 the gallery started to develop computer software for the display of textile images on wide screens. The galleries were further expanded in 1996 to accommodate the growing library and research archive.

In 2005 a representative gallery was opened in New York.