Walls have always been a place where artists have expressed themselves. And pochoir, or stencil art, has a long and honourable history all over the world.
In France, you could say it all began thousands and thousands of years ago, with the cave painters of places like Lascaux and Niaux, stencilling their beautiful images on the walls of caves(top, detail from a Niaux cave; bottom, detail from a Lascaux cave).
Much later, the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used stencils to create wall paintings or frescoes. Graffiti also appeared, not much of it has artistic merit but it's very interesting historically. The best-known examples of such ancient graffiti in the world are at Pompeii.
Frescoes were very popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance but gradually stencilling fell out of favour for the creation of wall art. However it was still being used extensively to create designs for wallpaper, playing cards, etc.
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