Object Design in the Age of Enlightenment: The History of the Royal Free Drawing School in Paris

The Royal Free Drawing School (Ecole royale gratuite de dessin) fulfilled the Enlightenment ideal of an education open to all, rich and poor, male and female, and an education founded not on apprenticeship and the teachings of one master, but open to ideas of all sorts and the practical application of universal principles.
The surviving documents, engravings, drawings, and objects that can be traced to the School, as well as the impressive number of artisans who trained there - craftsmen such as Claude Odiot, sculptors such as Sebastien Cave, architects such as Charles Percier, and painters such as Girodet - and the important figures in eighteenth-century cultural life - such as Voltaire, Lavoisier, the duc de Choiseul, and Madame du' Barry - who were involved with the School attest to its enormous importance in the development of the decorative arts in France during the Ancien Regime and in the century that followed.

Ulrich Leben is associate curator at Waddesdon Manor, associate professor at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, and lecturer at the Ecole du Louvre.