Masterstick

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A long stick with a padded ball at one end that painters rest on the canvas to steady their painting hand
2. A rest used by artists, held in one hand with its padded tip resting on the work, to keep the brush hand steady
3. A painter's support stick, often called a mahlstick or maulstick, that keeps the wrist and hand braced while fine detail is applied

Etymology: The painter's hand rest, a long stick with a padded end that lets an artist steady a brush hand over a delicate area of canvas, takes its name from a Dutch word meaning "masterpiece." The reason is a guild custom: in the workshops of the Low Countries, a journeyman had to produce a "meesterstuk," a test piece proving his skill, before he could be admitted as a master. The tool's name seems to have come from the same workshop world, with the idea of a stick belonging to that test-piece culture. The English form shows the Dutch word passing into Scots as "maisterstick," which then became the English term. Dutch also gives the related sense "stik," meaning "piece," and English has a parallel in "steck," also meaning "piece," so the word's second half preserves an older sense of a single piece or portion. Its English relative is "masterpiece," which came from the same Dutch source, so the two words are closely linked despite their very different uses today.