Cliche verre (literately “glass print” in French) is a type of photogram (camera less image).
Traditionally, a glass plate was coated with an opaque material and then an image was ‘drawn’ on the plate by removing parts of the coating. One then used this plate to make a photogram by exposing light sensitive paper through the glass plate. One obtained a print with dark lines (where the coating was removed) on a light background.
The cliche verre process dates back to the very beginning of photography (mid-1830s) and had its heyday in the 1850s. There was a brief and small resurgence of interest in the process in the 1960s and 70s but the process never became particularly popular.
I have updated the process to the 21st century. I made a drawing in PowerPoint and printed it out on transparent plastic as I do for all my alt process negatives. The resulting negative was then printed as a cyanotype.
