Carton-pierre
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Papier-mâché that has been made to resemble wood, stone, or metal, used as decoration. uncountable
"There were, indeed, high-backed Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral lamp over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from Wardour Street and tapestry from France, bits of armour, double-handed swords and battle-axes made of carton-pierre, looking-glasses, statuettes of saints, and Dresden china—nothing, in a word, could be chaster."
Example
More examples"There were, indeed, high-backed Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral lamp over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from Wardour Street and tapestry from France, bits of armour, double-handed swords and battle-axes made of carton-pierre, looking-glasses, statuettes of saints, and Dresden china—nothing, in a word, could be chaster."
Etymology
Borrowed from French carton-pierre (literally “stone cardboard”).
More for "carton-pierre"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.