Page from a Scrapbook containing Drawings and Several Prints of Architecture, Interiors, Furniture and Other Objects 1795 - 1805

This is a page from a scrapbook containing drawings and prints, created by Charles Percier, a leading architect and designer during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Percier’s work reflects the shifting political and cultural landscape of post-revolutionary France and the Napoleonic era. Percier and his partner, Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, were instrumental in defining the Empire style, which drew inspiration from classical antiquity, connecting it to ideas of power and imperial ambition. The drawings here hint at the meticulous planning and the grandeur associated with the Empire style, but they also represent something more intimate. Scrapbooks were often deeply personal spaces. They served as collections of memories, ideas, and inspirations. What does it mean for an architect, who shapes public and private spaces, to keep a personal archive? How do these drawings and prints reveal the dialogue between private contemplation and public expression, between the personal and the political? The scrapbook invites us to consider the role of design in constructing identity, both individual and national, during a period of immense social change.