A hand-drawn plate from a bound folio of technical drawings by a student of the National School of Arts and Crafts in Aix-en-Provence. An offshoot of its more famous sister school in Paris, the Ecole d'Arts et Métiers. This institution has been the leading school of engineering in France for over 250 years. The 3-year course trained students in mechanical, industrial and energy engineering and included drafting technical drawings such as this. Students had to render their own drafts of various schematics using pen, ink and watercolour.

The original artwork for this piece is a page from a bound book of hand-drawn plates. Often the pages of these antique books are sold off individually, until nothing of the original book remains. Our conservation scanning techniques means that individual pages from bound books such as this can be enjoyed without destroying the original.

This drawing titled ‘Cinematique’ meaning ‘kinetic’, is a technical diagram showing the transformation of movements on a ‘Coulisse de Stephenson’, a type of steam motor, named for the “Father of Railways’, George Stephenson.