The articles in this tenth volume of Typography papers were first essayed at ‘Rencontres musicologiques de Valenciennes: “Le livre de musique au pochoir: techniques, répertoires, ateliers”’, a symposium convened at the Musée des Beaux-arts, Valenciennes, on 23 and 24 May 2019. The event was part of the ‘Rencontres de Valenciennes’ series organised through a partnership between the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IReMus, Paris), Direction régionale des affaires culturelles (DRAC) des Hauts-de-France, and Harmonia sacra (Valenciennes), an ensemble that performs and promotes baroque music. The subject of French stencilled music books (livres de musique au pochoir) came to the fore following earlier meetings devoted to baroque religious music in France and Belgium. The symposium brought together musicologists, book historians, and specialists in stencil work […].

[Please see ‘Introduction’ [PDF] for full text and bibliography.]

Achille Davy-Rigaux
Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (CNRS, UMR 8223)

Eric Kindel
University of Reading, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication

Paris and Reading, December 2025

Achille Davy-Rigaux, Fabien Guilloux, Eric Kindel:
Introduction

Laurent Guillo:
Liturgical book stencillers in Paris before and after the Revolution

This study assembles the biographies of the principal liturgical book stencillers active in Paris before and after the French Revolution. They include Jean-Bruno Peaucellier, Jacques-Guillaume Bonnisselle, Charles Berthot, Jean-Denis Chandora, Pierre-Louis Cousin, and Louis-Pierre Piorette. Their stencilled books are inventoried and described, together with the stencils they used and features characteristic of their work. Concluding remarks address the ­general circumstances, prevalence, and clients of Paris stencillers during this period.

Eric Kindel:
Stencil-making in Paris in the eighteenth century

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.

Nathalie Berton-Blivet & Alban Framboisier:
Liturgical books stencilled for the Chapelle royale, 1701–66

This is a study of two series of liturgical books stencilled for the Chapelle royale in the eighteenth century. The first series was produced by André Philidor and Philippe Guilbert Le Roy between 1701 and 1703, the second by Charles Suademont and Jean-Baptiste Métoyen between 1756 and 1766. For both series, the study describes the circumstances of their production, compares their liturgical content and use, and provides biographical information about the individuals involved in their making. Thereafter, the stencils and other materials and techniques used to produce the books are discussed and enumerated. Concluding remarks raise further questions about the ­production of both series and the possible links between them.

Jean-Paul C.  Montagnier:
Stencilled polyphonic masses in France, 1765–1810

This is a study of stencilled polyphonic masses produced in France after the cessation of activity at the workshop of the Ballard family, which had made and printed choirbooks typographically up to 1761. The study reviews the characteristics of stencilled polyphonic masses, the sources drawn on to produce them, and their layout and function. It concludes that stencilled choirbooks of this kind were not always reliable for use in performing polyphonic masses due to the significant number of errors in them. Their atypical layout, which compromised function, suggests that the choirbook itself progressively became a means of conserving a ­composer’s work and was no longer an object intended for performance.

Typography papers [10] is published by the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading (www.reading.ac.uk/typography).

Editors:  Achille Davy-Rigaux & Eric Kindel

Editorial group for this volume:  Nathalie Berton-Blivet, Achille Davy-Rigaux, Fabien Guilloux, Eric Kindel, Robin Kinross

Designer:  Eric Kindel

Designed, typeset, and made-up in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication using Adobe InDesign 14.0.2.

Typefaces:  Haultin, Arnhem Fine, and Bery Roman (modified) by Fred Smeijers, ­courtesy of Type By.

ISBN 978-0704916-17-3

Copyright © 2025 Typography papers, the authors, and the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading.

All rights reserved.

Cover (from left to right):
Engraving by Louis Simonneau showing a stenciller at work, detail, 1701; see this volume, pp. 64–5.
Stencil plate, brass, probably 18th ­century, see this ­volume, p. 61.
Initial, passe-partout, and plainchant, detail from Graduel-antiphonaire à l’usage de S. Geneviève, stencilled by Charles Berthot, 1788; see this volume, pp. 33–5.