Meaning of carton-pierre | Babel Free

Definitions

Papier-mâché that has been made to resemble wood, stone, or metal, used as decoration.

uncountable

Equivalents

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.”

““[…]Your talent is so great that it is in everything you do, in what's less good as well as in what's best. You've some forty volumes to show⟳ for it—forty volumes of life, of observation, of magnificent ability.” “I'm very clever, of course I know⟳ that,” St. George replied, quietly. “Lord, what rot they'd all be if I hadn't been! I'm a successful charlatan—I've been able to pass⟳ off my system. But do you know⟳ what it is? It's carton-pierre.””

CEFR level