Le Pegase d'Hermes au Bloc

India and the French textile capital, Lyon, meet in this crossed composition featuring a traditional Indian floral motif and Christian Renonciat’s carré Pégase d’Hermès: “a mechanical construction, a tribute to Leonardo da Vinci and the dream of building a new world.” Colorful block-printed or stamped cottons were imported into Europe from India from the late 16th century onwards. Their motifs were carved on wooden blocks, each of which corresponds to a specific color. As such, block printing is the forerunner of the silk screen technique (à la Lyonnaise in French), in which each frame corresponds to a single color in the finished design.