Carton - Artistic Design

Artistic Design

In art history, the carton (pronounced the French way) was a drawing on ordinary cardboard, used as life-size design for the manufacture in an atelier of a valuable tapestry, such as a gobelin. During the weaving it hung behind the tapestry in the making, a time-consuming process thus in a creative sense simplified to 'mechanical' painting-by-numbers.

As these were extremely valuable, often commanded by the very richest art-buyers, including princes who hung them in their palaces and even took them on their travels as prestigious displays of wealth, often with a visual message, especially the world-famous Flemish ateliers were deemed worthy to have cartons made by some of the greatest graphic artists of the time, including such celebrated painters as Rubens.

Read more about this topic:  Carton

Famous quotes containing the words artistic and/or design:

    If a man is a good lawyer, a good physician, a good engineer ... he may be a fool in every other capacity. But no deficiency or mistake of judgment is forgiven to a woman ... and should she fail anywhere, if she has any scientific attainment, or artistic faculty, instead of standing her interest as an excuse, it is censured as an aggravation and offence.
    E.P.P., U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Una, p. 28 ( February 1855)

    Joe ... you remember I said you wouldn’t be cheated?... Nobody is really. Eventually all things work out. There’s a design in everything.
    Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)