This article describes the transformation of the Royal Dublin Society's Schools, founded in 1746, into the Dublin School of Design in 1849. It describes the early history of the Schools, what was taught there, and it indicates how the political changes following the Act of Union of 1801 brought the institution under centralized British government control. During the 184os there was a growing awareness by the Royal Dublin Society of the need for education in drawing for manufacture, in order to improve Irish industry. A debate developed within the Society with regard to the new design educational policies of the British Board of Trade, since the Society needed further state grants to develop its teaching. This momentum led, in 1849, to an extension of the Board's control over the schools. During the 185os Henry Cole and the Science and Art Department imposed their standard regulations with rigour, making the institution conform in organization and staffing to the department's policies. This led ultimately, in 1877, to the state take-over of ownership of the School, and it became a provincial copy of the South Kensington model. The London connection permitted the School to participate in the larger United Kingdom art educational structure of syllabus and examinations. But it also revealed the inappropriateness of the Science and Art policies (generated in the wake of the British industrial revolution) for Dublin, where mass-production manufacture was lacking. Throughout the nineteenth century the Irish economy remained agricultural, and industry declined in the face of British-based manufactures.