Wiktionary
n. A background of many small flowers and plants, popular in tapestry of the Middle Ages in Europe.
Wikipedia
Millefleur, millefleurs or mille-fleur ( French mille-fleurs, literally "thousand flowers") refers to a background style of many different small flowers and plants, usually shown on a green ground, as though growing in grass. It is essentially restricted to European tapestry during the late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, from about 1400 to 1550, but mainly about 1480-1520. It differs from many other styles of floral decoration, such as the arabesque, in that many different sorts of individual plants are shown, and there is no regular pattern. The plants fill the field without connecting or significantly overlapping. In that it also differs from the plant and floral decoration of Gothic page borders in illuminated manuscripts.
There is also a rather different style known as millefleur in Indian carpets from about 1650 to 1800.
Usage examples of "millefleur".
The Towne School Budget had gone missing for a week once, in 1962, and the teachers had chipped in and bought Rollie French who was Head of Selectmen then a millefleurs paperweight.
It was a mystical pictorial with a millefleurs background dotted with several of the small animals representing the forest bestiaries so beloved by medievals: birds, rabbits, goats, sheep, squirrels and hounds.
In the vast bed, she even appeared dainty, with her millefleurs shawl over a faded print-silk blouse.
You see I am in brilliant Paris, in a palatial hotel, enjoying all the luxuries wealth can procure, and Madame Millefleur is my companion.
The ceiling had chandeliers and allegorical frescoes, and the floor had parquetry and Ilarnan millefleur carpets.
Madame Millefleur was from a gentleman who had sent similar ones to Margot many times.
Skippy was trying to edge his way out of the room, but Madame Millefleur was blocking the door, unabashedly eavesdropping.
Madame Millefleur decided this was not the ideal time to ask Woodbridge for the return of her dowry, paltry though it was, and played least in sight.
The picture frames, a crystal bud vase, an assortment of tiny bronze cats, millefleur paperweights, a walnut gavel with a bronze plate on the handle.
And that did not suit him at all, for he was well over sixty and hated waiting in cold antechambers and parading eau des millefleurs and four thieves’ vinegar before old marquises or foisting a migraine salve off on them.