Vignette - Everything2.com : vimarsana.com

Vignette
Fri Jul 07 2000 at 19:25:11
The earliest part of the sixteenth century has been called the golden age of printing, the development of engraving lending a hand and the subsequent improvement in book illustration, with engraved or decorated title-pages as well as vignettes or headpieces or tailpieces in the text. As a “decorative design” they first appeared in 1751. The word was first borrowed from the diminutive of the Old French word
vigne for vineyard and later became the French word
vignette, both related to the root word vine. One who creates vignettes is called a vignettist and vignetting is the act of creating a border or background with gradual shading in a picture or photograph or to ornament with vignettes and lastly to depict in or as in a vignette. It is now, by extension, used for any miniature work, visual, verbal, or musical and a couple of synonyms for a vignette would be a thumb nail sketch and cameo.