passepartout

Candlewick as a bedspread, as Geraint says, but I was puzzled by the word passepartout in this meaning for many years too - I used to encounter it in books, like you.

languagehat.com: W.G. SEBALD. 2004

I wanted to repair the walls, but at the same time to foster the passepartout menagerie that refused to recognize them.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

I wanted to repair the walls, but at the same time to foster the passepartout menagerie that refused to recognize them.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

If your object is economy as well as simplicity, and you are by chance just beginning to furnish your house and own no pictures, we would suggest good photographs of your favourite old masters, framed close, without a margin, in the passepartout method (glass with a narrow black paper tape binding).

The Art of Interior Decoration Grace Wood

Wall papers, at ten cents a roll, come in charming colours and designs, and with a few cheap French coloured prints, framed in passepartout, your room is attractive at once.

The Art of Interior Decoration Grace Wood

If you use favourite photographs, suppress all margins and frame with narrow black passepartout.

The Art of Interior Decoration Grace Wood

Old coloured prints need narrow black passepartout, while broad passepartout in pink, blue or pale green to match the leading tone in wall paper makes your quaint, old black-and-white prints very decorative.

The Art of Interior Decoration Grace Wood

If your prints are black and white use broad passepartout in same colour as the wall paper, only a tone deeper.

The Art of Interior Decoration Grace Wood

But I remembered the proverbial impetuosity of Scotsmen in pushing their fortunes, and his personal appearance may have helped to conciliate me, since my mind had misgiven me that I had done wiser to insist on an interview, instead of buying a pig in a poke; for looks no less than knowledge are a physician's _passepartout_ among the ladies who bring their ailments to our provincial spas.

Two Sides of the Face Midwinter Tales Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

He seems to be acquiring a sense of power's last paradox - that it is most a prison when one thinks of it as a passepartout.

The Corner on National Review Online Robert Costa 2010