Cartouche (design)

A cartouche (also cartouch) is an oval or oblong design with a slightly surface, typically edged with ornamental scrollwork. It is used to hold a painted or low relief design.

In Early Modern design, since the early 16th century, the cartouche is a scrolling frame device, derived originally from Italian cartoccia. Such cartouches are characteristically stretched, pierced and scrolling (illustration, left). Another cartouche figures prominently in the title page of Giorgio Vasari's Lives, framing a minor vignette with a device of pierced and scrolling papery cartoccia (see illustration).

The engraved trade card of the London clockmaker Percy Webster (illustration, right) shows a vignette of the shop in a scrolling cartouche frame of Rococo design that is composed entirely of scrolling devices.

Detail showing cartouche on the 1765 de l'Isle globe.

A cartouche framing device on a London clockmaker's tradecard, ca 1760. Such a "card" (engraved on paper) would be pasted into a clockcase

Portrait of a lady, oil on canvas in painted cartouche, by Garret Morphey

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