The earliest patterns were delicately handpainted on a printed grid, each little square representing one stitch. Later on the quality dropped significantly with patterns being mass produced, or cheaply printed as lithographes.
The popularity for Berlin woolwork ended around the time of the Arts and crafts movement.
At Roland-designs we do quality reproductions of those antique patterns, the charts are re-charted by hand one square at a time to ensure the best possible results.
Some of the patterns are in very bad conditions (ripped, faded, missing corners, etc...), so we do sometime have
to fix a little here-and-there, while staying as true as
possible to the original design.