Ramoneur prints grew out of French makers adapting Indian floral cotton fabrics, with colorful flowers on dark backgrounds. The name means “chimney sweep”, after the sooty shades that became fashionable in the late 1700s.

At Jouy-en-Josas near Paris, printers mixed tiny flowers with dense leaves in a pattern introduced in 1793. Other workshops took it up, and women in Provence used these dark floral fabrics for skirts and hooded capes.

Some of those designs still appear on new fabrics and in embroidery patterns. Embroiderers recreate the flowers with colored thread on black linen, keeping the dark backgrounds of the old prints.