Forney Library

Founded in 1886 through a bequest from industrialist Forney, it was intended to serve as a documentation center for Parisian craftsmen. Today, it offers art and architecture enthusiasts books and periodicals, as well as slides, posters, 18th-century fabric samples, furniture and ironwork drawings, wallpaper collections, and many other treasures. The Forney Library is dedicated to the decorative arts, graphic design, fashion and costume, iconography, the history of printing, and art in general.

https://www.paris.fr/equipements/bibliotheque-forney-18#presentation

Serving as both a preservation and lending library, the Forney Library specializes in fine arts, decorative arts, graphic arts, crafts, techniques, fashion, advertising, and design. It is one of the City of Paris’s key heritage libraries, notable for the diversity of its collections: books and journals, exhibition and museum catalogues, auction and trade fair catalogues, and much more. It holds one of France’s richest collections, including advertising posters, wallpapers, fabric samples, commercial catalogues, and postcards. It also houses original drawings, models, and professional archives, as well as a substantial body of advertising materials.

The Forney Library is part of the City of Paris’s network of specialized libraries, with collections focused on decorative arts, crafts and techniques, fine arts, and graphic arts. It regularly hosts exhibitions.

Forney Library, 1 rue du Figuier – (tel. 01 42 78 14 60, open Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 1:00 PM to 7:30 PM, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 AM to 7:30 PM)