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The
Pochoir technique was used mainly in France from the 1880’s to 1930’s. 
Pochoir printing was used in industrial design, interiors, textile, and
architecture.

The
work of major period furniture designers and architects, such as Eileen
Gray, René Herbst, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and Charlotte Perriand are
colorfully documented in these folios. Similarly, French pattern books
of this period, consisting entirely of pochoir images of floral,
insect-animal, and geometric forms, were created to inspire primarily
fabric, interior and wallpaper designers. Featured in this display are
the floral and geometric patterns of Edouard Benedictus’ Relais , insect motifs in E. A. Seguy’s Papillons and Insectes as well as abstract forms created by Sonia Delaunay in Compositions, Couleurs, Idées.

Pochoir
incorporates the use of numerous stencils for applying individual
colours using watercolour or gouage to the one sheet. A craftsman known
as a découpeur would cut stencils with a straight-edged knife.
The stencils were made of aluminum, copper, or zinc and plastic in the
C20th.  Stencils created by the découpeur would be passed on to the coloristes.
The coloristes applied the pigments using a variety of different
brushes and methods of paint application to create the finished pochoir
print.

The
Pochoir technique was labour intensive, expensive and slow. As a
result, techniques such as lithography and serigraphy, mechanized in
nature, replaced pochoir as a method colour printing.