Mise-en-carte (Point-paper)

Veret · 1760/90

Medium

Ink and gouache on hand drawn graph paper

Original size

45.1 × 58.2 cm (17 3/4 × 22 7/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

This meticulous sheet of ink and gouache on hand-drawn graph paper sits at the boundary between functional craft document and quietly compelling artwork — each coloured square a coded instruction for a weaver's loom. A *mise-en-carte*, or point-paper design, was the essential translation tool of eighteenth-century silk and textile production. The draughtsman — working in the Lyon or Parisian tradition — would map out a woven pattern square by square onto ruled paper, with each cell representing a single warp thread raised or suppressed. Veret's example, dating from roughly 1760 to 1790, demonstrates the extraordinary precision these pattern-drafters brought to what was, technically, industrial documentation. The gouache is applied with jeweller's care, the colours still luminous after two and a half centuries. Works like this rarely survived because they were tools, not treasures — consulted on the factory floor and discarded when a pattern run ended, which makes the Art Institute of Chicago's holding all the more significant. The hand-painted oil reproduction honours every detail of the original: the warm ochre of the aged graph paper, the jewel-toned gouache, and the faint pencil grid beneath — transforming a working document of the textile trade into something worthy of a frame.