cut-out stencils

A thin piece of sheet material (e.g. metal, cardboard, etc.) in which one or more holes have been cut, of such shape that when a brush charged with pigment is passed over the back of the sheet, a desired pattern, letter, or figure is produced on the surface upon which the sheet is laid. Stencils allowed multiple copies of a design to be repeated and the use of the same stencil can often be recognized on different books.