Following the monastic age, royal courts and important families were fascinated by beautiful bindings and imposed their own styles. Louis XII chose the porcupine as an emblem, Francois I preferred the salamander, Henri III chose seedlings with funereal patterns, and the aggressive Henri VI adopted the excessive refinement of fanfare decoration. The seventeenth century swayed between the grandiloquence of Louis XIV, whose initials and solar star became his emblem, and the extreme sobriety of the Jansenists. The eighteenth century maintained the preceding century's trends without great imagination and, when the French revolution occurred, beautiful bindings became scarce and gave way to the bonnet phrygian. The nineteenth century saw an ongoing suite of styles. The Empire brought back a neo-classical style, influenced by antiquity, in which stylistic motifs such as the eagle, the bee, and the Egyptian palmetto reappeared. The Romantics displayed a passion for the Middle Ages and a strong infatuation with pastiches of previous centuries' styles. While the nineteenth century promoted the development of commercial binding, it also opened the way to modern art binding, where certain binders showed no restraint with artistic texts and images, recreating aesthetic and unique life spaces through their bindings-masterpieces whose only key for interpretation is the freedom of their creator. Pierre Ouvrard is one of those rare artisans who always know how to combine thoroughness and freedom and whose craft reflects life's textures.