Mise-en-carte (Point-paper)

Veret · 1760/90

Medium

Ink and gouache on hand drawn graph paper

Original size

44.5 × 81.9 cm (17 1/2 × 32 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Mise-en-carte (Point-paper) is a rare surviving example of the technical artistry that underpinned the French silk-weaving industry at its eighteenth-century peak — a working design document that is also quietly beautiful in its own right. Produced in Lyon or within the broader French textile trade between 1760 and 1790, this type of drawing was a weaver's blueprint: each square of the hand-drawn graph paper corresponds to a single warp and weft intersection, with ink and gouache marks directing the loom's action thread by thread. The restrained palette of the medium — precise, functional, colour-coded — gives the finished sheet an almost mosaic quality, abstract geometry born entirely from practical necessity. Point-paper designs like this were closely guarded commercial secrets in their day; Lyon's silk designers were known to destroy working documents rather than allow rivals to copy a pattern, making well-preserved examples of this kind genuinely uncommon in museum collections. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the graphic precision of the original into the warmth of paint on canvas, preserving every ruled line and tinted square while giving the composition the depth and presence it deserves on a wall rather than behind archival glass.