Pochoir Technique
Dating from the fifteenth century, pochoir is a stencil technique that became highly favored in France for creating the brilliant and exuberant prints of the art nouveau and art deco periods.
To create a print, a series of stencils was made for each color separation of the design. Each stencil was carefully placed and the paint, whether it is was watercolor, gauche, ink, or metallic, was applied by hand. This process was repeated with each stencil and particular color separation until the design was complete. In some cases, highly intricate patterns required as many as eighty stencils to create the final design.
Pochoir became the ideal medium for artists as it enabled them to create prints with a high degree of color intensity, depth and brilliance. Initially recognized as the ultimate in printing, the pochoir process was abandoned in later years because it was too costly and labor intensive.
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