Douat's Table of 256 Designs
The 1722 Méthode closes with a dense table of 256 distinct little designs. Here it is, recreated — every cell rendered live from Douat's letters.
Take the four tiles A, B, C, D, two by two — top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right — and you can fill a 2×2 block in 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 = 256 ways. Douat tabulates all of them. Each entry below is one of those 2×2 super-tiles, drawn at double size so its shape reads clearly.
He offers the table as a working dictionary: a way to look up the center and corners of a larger composition, since every big design is, locally, one of these 256 blocks. It is the combinatorial heart of the book — the complete alphabet of two-by-two arrangements from which the engraved plates are spelled.
Below, all 256 are rebuilt from their letter codes. Compare them with the seventy-two full designs in the companion article to see how these small blocks tile up into the book's plates.
Click any design to flip it and read its letters.
This is a companion to Douat: An Alphabet of Tiles, which tells the story and shows the seventy-two full designs.
Open Patchwork →