Rubelli | Madame du Barry

A point paper is the gridded drawing a weaver sets up from, every square standing for the crossing of one warp with one weft. The eighteenth-century sheet behind this design is held at the Musée des Tissus in Lyon, and rather than smooth the grid away Rubelli has kept it: the squares of the point paper stay visible in the ground, so the cloth carries a record of how it was made.

At 761 g it is substantial, with a 93 cm vertical repeat over 69 cm across, and it is produced in one version only. Drapery and decoration is where it belongs, on curtains that hang long, a pair of panels, a headboard.

135 cm wide, made in Italy.