Mise-en-carte (Point-paper)

Veret · 1760/90

Medium

Ink and gouache on hand drawn graph paper

Original size

45.5 × 55.9 cm (17 7/8 × 22 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

The mise-en-carte is one of the quietly remarkable objects in the history of textile design — a working document that, through sheer precision, becomes something that reads as fine art in its own right. Created between 1760 and 1790, this piece belongs to the tradition of French point-paper design most closely associated with the silk-weaving industry centered in Lyon. A mise-en-carte served as the weaver's blueprint: each colored square corresponded to a specific thread, translating a designer's vision into a language the loom could follow. Working in ink and gouache on hand-drawn graph paper, Veret produced something where the functional and the beautiful are entirely inseparable — the grid itself becomes the composition, and the layered gouache tones carry a warmth that photographs consistently understate. The Art Institute of Chicago holds several such works from this period, treating them as significant examples of French decorative arts at their height rather than mere technical diagrams, which is exactly what they are. Our hand-painted oil reproduction honors the original's extraordinary detail — the careful geometry of the grid, the depth of the gouache tones, the sense of a craftsman's intelligence made visible — brought into oil on canvas with the same patient attention the work has always demanded.