Imagerie d'Épinal, Historical print workshop in Épinal, France
Imagerie d'Épinal is a traditional print workshop housed in a heritage-protected building that produces woodcut and lithographic images. The facility still operates with original machinery and hand-printing techniques that have remained largely unchanged since the workshop's earliest days.
Jean-Charles Pellerin founded the workshop in 1796, initially producing religious images and everyday scenes using hand-colored woodcuts. The operation expanded during the Napoleonic era to become a major center for popular print production, reaching millions of people across France.
The workshop shaped French daily life by producing affordable prints of military scenes, folk tales, and children's stories that reached homes across the country during the 1800s. These images became part of how ordinary families saw their world and passed down stories to their children.
Visitors can watch artisans at work using original equipment and observe how prints are made by hand using traditional methods. Planning a visit during demonstration times helps you see the printing process in action rather than just the empty workshop.
The workshop holds more than 6,000 lithographic stones from the 1800s and 1900s, representing a tangible record of two centuries of print production that exists nowhere else in such quantity. Many of these stones remain functional and are occasionally used for printing, keeping this particular craft technique actively alive.
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