Menuisier en Batimens, Contenant Trente-huit Planches

Paperback. Very Good. Lucotte, [Jacques-Raymond] with engravings by Bénard, [Robert]. The section on woodworking in buildings from the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert published initially in Paris between 1751 and 1772. This section, folio, 260x365mm, is well bound for protection in 20th century brown thin card covers finished on the spine in green hessian or similar cloth; tiny worm hole in the extreme lower left margins of the first three or four leaves and with the usual slight browning around the margins but a very good, complete copy with clear, crisp text on 16 numbered pages and 38 full page copper engraved plates (numbered I - XXIV but several with subnumbered plates in the particular subseries). The Encyclopédie, the magnificent Enlightenment undertaking with the grand aim of publishing all the world's knowledge and intended to "change the way people think", appeared between 1751 and 1772 in 28 folio volumes with over 70,000 articles and more than 3,000 illustrations, later supplemented with additional material and revised elements. It was the first general encyclopedia to include material on technology and on crafts, entirely appropriately as the underlying focus of the work was on human reason rather than on theology or nature and because the editors wished to provide information applicable to people's everyday lives. There is no separate section title page and it's unclear exactly when this part was published but judging by the quality of the engravings it's most likely from the original edition or at least from a very early printing. The text consists of descriptions of the 38 plates written by the architect Jacques-Raymond Lucotte who also drew the material for the plates which were then engraved by Robert Bénard. Lucotte was responsible for a dozen craft articles which appeared in volumes IX to XVII and for over 650 illustrations in the Encylopédie. Bénard, in turn, was a major contributor to the Encyclopédie, engraving something over 1,800 plates. This is a very good, desirable copy of a self-contained part of arguably the greatest and most ambitious publishing undertaking of the Enlightenment.