The French inspired craft of covering cardboard with fabric using traditional book binding techniques, materials and tools to make boxes, trays, files, folders etc. Fabric can be applied with a light PVA glue or hand stitched.
I first found a cartonnage tray and a tiny box with drawers in an antiques market in Beaminster, Dorset, England. These had been beautifully made with the tiniest hand stitches; for some reason I didn’t buy either of them, but later when a friend introduced me to cartonnage work she had been making in France, I realised that this was what they were and luckily could recall the detail.
These two influences prompted our Cartonnage book and a series of courses.