Obs. Also 7 tale-doux, 8 tali-douce. [Fr., = soft cutting.] Engraving on a metal plate with a graver or burin, as distinguished from work with the dry point, and from etching.
1650. Evelyn, Diary, 21 June. A booke of statues … by which one may discover many errors in the taille douce of Perrier.
1657. in Burton’s Diary (1828), II. App. 541. That no printers … imprint, or cause to be imprinted any work or works, book or books, taledoux or taledouxes.
1675. Lond. Gaz., No. 980/4. He already hath 108 Plates … cut in Taille Douce.
1718. A. Nisbet, Ess. Armories, Index Terms, Sable, Black, is known in Tali-douce by perpendicular and horizontal Hatches.
1810. Q. Rev., III. 203. Plates engraved, as Malte-Brun tells us, in taille douce.
