L’artisanat du meuble à Paris au XVIIIe siècle : Étienne Avril

Furniture-making in Paris during the eighteenth century : Etienne Avril. Etienne Avril, known as Avril l’Aîné (the elder) was a Parisian cabinet-maker. During his lifetime (1748-1791) he acquired a considerable reputation, but he was subsequendy forgotten. In 1774 he was received as master in the cabinet-makers’ guild. In his subsequent career he witnessed ail the legislative measures which attempted to regulate the craft professions, from Turgot’s edict of 1776 up to the law of 17 March 1791 which finally abolished the guild system, replacing it with the « patente », a licence to exercise a trade or a profession. Hitherto unpublished documents from the French national archives and from those of the Seine department (a record of the placing of seals on his belongings at the time of his death, the claims of his creditors registered with a justice of the peace) allow the author of this article to reconstitute something of the craftsmen’s milieu in which Etienne Avril worked, and to analyse the relationships between suppliers and creators in furniture production.Vétois Isabelle. L’artisanat du meuble à Paris au XVIIIe siècle : Étienne Avril. In: Histoire de l'art, N°16, 1991. Les arts décoratifs. pp. 29-40