The origins of the Valencia School of Applied Arts and Artistic Crafts are to be found in the impulse the mercantile governments of the c.XIX gave to the implantation of artistic education applied to industry with the objective of adapting the productive systems to the transformations of the Industrial Revolution. Under these criteria, in 1849 Elementary Studies in Drawing were created in Valencia, dependant on the San Carlos Academy, an entity which was initially doomed to failure, because of the fact that this new line of teaching had to confront itself with the academia prejudice in respect to what were contemptuously referred to as mechanical arts.

When in 1900 the Elementary Studies in Drawing became the School of Art and Industrial Art, no substantial change was brought about in respect to the old line of teaching, but rather the introduction of workshop type teaching supposed a break in the tradition of the academia methodology. Now began the direct experience with the behaviour of the materials, their possibilities and limitations and the learning of the different techniques, which in its turn to bring about the shattering of the academia maxim that design was nothing more than the transfer of a drawing into an object.

It was in the year 1919 when the new denomination School of
Applied Arts and Artistic Crafts was coined, a consequence of the new education policy that unified the Industrial Schools with the Schools of Arts and Crafts, which saw its denomination extended through the addition of the adjective artistic, in a reaffirmation of its difference.

The brief period of the Republic brought on the incorporation of the Professional School of Architecture, a very important innovation because of the common bases that architecture and design share insofar as both these areas were participating in a commitment to the new technologies and the new social requirements, from city planning to furnishings and domestic interior design.

This orientation, which supposed a teaching experience parallel to the most avant-garde tendencies of the European schools, was truncated by the Civil War. The Franco administration gave a new focus to this area of education, which was directed in the line of recuperating the popular craftsmanship and the manufacture of sumptuous objects in the traditional way.

It was not until 1963 when a new transformation came about in the teaching of the Arts and Artistic Crafts, with a twofold mission: to maintain and transmit the traditional techniques, and to train new professionals in the area of design, which was what was being required in the area of industrial development. New special areas of study were created: Decoration, Window Dressing, Projects, Sign-Writing, Figurines, Advertising Drawing, Posters and Artistic Illustration, Design, Tracing, Copying and Artistic Drafting. All this in addition to the special areas of the artistic crafts which included Book-binding, Engraving, Lithography, Cabinet making, Ceramics, Engraving in Metal, Leather Embossing, Casting, Working of Precious Metals, Embroidery and Lace, Dressmaking, Wood Carving, Stone Carving, Fan making, Jewellery, Carpentry, Silk Screen Printing, Artistic Photography and Marquetry. Under the new law, the School became the Valencia School of Applied Arts and Artistic Crafts.

The General Law for Education of 1970, under which the different levels of education in Spain began to come more in line and on a level with the those of the more developed economies, ignored the regulation of education in the area of art, precisely in the decade during which Design was being introduced into our society.

The Valencia School of Applied Arts and Artistic Crafts, situated within an emerging industrial environment and with a more and more diversified demand for professionals in the field of design, had to face the challenge of taking on the training of designers with a degree/diploma which, under the new Law, was outside any and all academic recognition or sanctioning, and deprived of the capacity to officially update its courses and programs. Even so, the transition towards democracy and the immersion into the contemporary which came about after the death of Franco also became apparent in the Valencia School of Applied Arts and Artistic Crafts, which embarked upon, under the initiative of its Faculty and students, a revision and updating of its courses and programs. Under this pedagogical revision, which happened in the eighties, the courses and programs for design in the different areas of specialization were to make the project the central objective of the learning process, around which a plurality of interdisciplinary contents were organized in the following areas of design: Graphic, Industrial, Interior and Fashion, and also Ceramics and Photography. Meanwhile, in the artistic crafts were taught along the lines of monographic courses, maintaining and transmitting the traditional techniques.

What was at that time known as the Valencia School of Applied Arts and Artistic Crafts celebrated its 50th Anniversary during the 1999-2000 academic year. The Anniversary was celebrated with a variety of events which displayed the work that was carried out in this educational institution, as well as the historical evolution of its role in the community. An extensive program of events was organized, consisting in exhibitions, publications, seminars, and in the production and premiere in Spain of the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, by Víctor Ullmann. The programming for this Anniversary was made possible thanks to the collaboration of a number of different Valencian political institutions, banks, businesses, the University, and different cultural institutions. In the closing ceremony of this 150th Anniversary, in February 2001, in the Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences, the Minister of Education of the Generalitat Valenciana announced the immediate introduction in Valencia of the Upper Level Studies in Design.

With the publication of the L.O.G.S.E in 1990 and of the legislation relating to the Upper Level Studies in Design in 1999, a new framework in the regulation of this area of education was defined. The educational offering in our Centre has since been organized in two levels: