Toile
Toile de Jouy is a single-colour figurative print on a pale cotton ground, named after the manufactory at Jouy-en-Josas near Versailles that produced it from the 1760s. The characteristic scenes are pastoral or narrative: figures in landscapes, ruins, harvests, small vignettes set among trees, engraved in fine line and printed from copperplate and later from engraved rollers.
The single colour is the whole discipline of the pattern. Because everything is drawn in one ink, the design has to carry its depth through line weight and hatching alone, which is why a good toile looks like a printed book illustration rather than like a textile design. The traditional colours are a madder red, an indigo blue, a sepia and a soft green.
Used across a whole room, on walls and curtains and upholstery together, a toile stops reading as a picture and becomes a tone. This was the original intention and it is still the most successful way to use it, because the pattern is too busy to sit as a single isolated element and too quiet to compete with anything else.
Where a whole room is too much, the pattern works well on the inside of a cupboard, on a blind, or on a headboard, where it is seen at close range and its drawing can be read as drawing.