La Folie de Bâtir: Pavillons d'agrément et folies sous l'Ancien Régime

Flammarion, 1995. Hardcover. VG- (Some scuffs to dj cover; page edges are tanning lightly.). Black cloth, black and illus. dust jacket in mylar cover; 192 pp., color and BW illus. Text is in French. "The charming garden follies of pre-Revolutionary France, spanning 150 years and the reigns of four monarchs, are today known almost exclusively to scholars. Imaginative creations of France's greatest architects and eloquent symbols of their era, they were built for the pleasure of the Bourbon kings and their courts. Many of these buildings have been destroyed or severely altered and the only records that survive are the drawings, engravings, architectural plans, and, more rarely, paintings of the period. Bernd H. Dams and Andrew Zega have made a major contribution to our knowledge of these structures in a magnificent collection of contemporary watercolor renderings based on rigorous scholarship and architectural precision depicting the most significant examples of garden architecture built in France from the 1630s to the Revolution. Their lively and informative text, which combines architectural history with fascinating insights and amusing anecdotes, brings these remarkable buildings and the vanished world that created them vividly to life." (from dj of English edition) One of 1042 copies.