The celebrated textbook, L’Art du Brodeur (1770), reveals that its author, the professional Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin (1721-1786), took both the design of the decoration and the method of its embroidery very seriously. He wrote that ‘La conception est l’esprit de la broderie’, or that the concept of the decoration is essential for the finished embroidery, which should work together in harmony. In this era embroidery was a way of showing off. The embroidery on this boy’s waistcoat is on the surface of the fabric and is called tambour work.