Stencil-making in Paris in the eighteenth century

Kindel, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9995-5891 (2025) Stencil-making in Paris in the eighteenth century. In: Davy-Rigaux, A. and Kindel, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9995-5891 (eds.) Stencilled music books in France: techniques, inventories, ateliers, 1669–1841. Typography papers (10). University of Reading, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, Reading, pp. 63-107. ISBN 9780704916173

Abstract/Summary

This is a study of stencil-making in Paris in the eighteenth century, and of stencilmakers active there. It reports on methods of work, commercial circumstances, locations, products, customers, distribution networks, and professional trajectories. Two stencilmakers are featured, Louis Bresson de Maillard and Jean Gabriel Bery, alongside other contemporary and later stencilmakers. Evidence drawn on includes texts describing stencil-making and stencil work, technical illustrations, advertisements, specimens, receipted bills, public administrative documents and death inventories, published works, and artefacts including stencil plates and stencil work. A series of appendices list known advertisements of Bresson de Maillard, transcribe and translate representative advertisements among them, and transcribe and translate descriptions and valuations of stencil merchandise, tools, and materials recorded in the inventories of Bery and two other Paris stencilmakers.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/87369
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Typography & Graphic Communication
Publisher	University of Reading, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
Publisher Statement	Stencilled music books in France: techniques, inventories, ateliers, 1669–1841 (Typography papers 10) offers studies of stencilled music books made in France and the stencil work that supported their creation. Biographies of individual stencillers and stencilmakers provide insights into their lives and professional circumstances, while inventories identify the scope of their work, its artistic and technical features, and the liturgical functions stencilled music books served for ecclesiastical and royal institutions. The volume in total makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature about a still relatively obscure technique of graphic production and the remarkable works that often resulted from its use. It adds new information about the production of plainchant and polyphonic music, for which stencilling proved especially well-suited in the context of liturgical services in the post-Tridentine period.
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