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A reconstruction of stencilling based on the description by Gilles Filleau des Billettes

This chapter is linked with Kindel, E. (ed.) (2013), ‘The description of stencilling by Gilles Filleau des Billettes: transcription and translation’ in the same book. The first of these paired items recounts and illustrates the reconstruction and testing of tools, furniture, and working methods for stencilling texts. The reconstruction is based on a description of stencilling written by Gilles Filleau des Billettes. The second item presents the text of Des Billettes’s description, written as part of the ‘description of trades' (Description des arts et métiers) carried out under the direction of the Académie royale des Sciences in Paris in the 1690s. The text is given in transcription (French, 10,000 words), accompanied by a parallel English translation; both are supplemented with reproductions of the marginal and intra-textual drawings made by Des Billettes. This research provides a close study of a – and possibly the – foundational document of stencilling of this kind. The method of reconstruction at the heart of the research raises numerous questions about the nature of the equipment and the method of working, and about the conduct of stencilling more generally – questions unlikely to arise through other modes of enquiry. Stencil work made with the reconstructed equipment thereafter provides historically credible examples not only of how such stencil work looks when well executed, but also its faults when poorly executed. Examples of work, illustrated in the essay, are compared to contemporary stencil artefacts, from which it is possible to detect whether the equipment and methods Des Billettes describes were used at the time. These comparisons add considerably to the picture of early stencilling, about which little is otherwise known.