Beschreibung:

ACADEMIE ROYALE DES SCIENCES, of Paris (publishers) -- Henri-Louis DUHAMEL du Monceau (1700-?1781), René-Antoine Ferchault de RÉAUMUR and others. Description des Arts et Métiers, faits ou approuvée par MM. de l'Academie des Sciences. Paris: 1761-1789. 45 volumes, containing 72 works (or part works) in 114 parts, 2° (c. 440 x 280mm). 2,078 engraved plates and plans, many folding. (About 120 plates with Patent Office stamp on verso, some light spotting or discolouration.) Contemporary English half calf (31 volumes) or modern half calf (11 volumes) bound to match, red morocco lettering-pieces on spines, the contemporary bindings: with gilt crest (a jamb unarmed) surmounting initials F.F.F. (rubbed, some joints cracked, spines chipped). Provenance : contemporary bindings: Francis Ferrand Foljambe (1749/50-1814, binding); modern bindings: Patent Office (two volumes and one part volume); British Library (two volumes with stamps, one with cancellation stamp). THE MOST COMPLETE SET TO BE OFFERED AT AUCTION IN RECENT YEARS; the most important and the largest work on the mechanical and industrial arts of the 18th century in France, and one of the earliest such projects to be undertaken in any country. Although encyclopaedic in scope, the work was not conceived in parallel to Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie , but in response to the perceived function of the Académie Royal des Sciences. A statement was published in 1699 in Histoire , an organ of the Académie, that outlined the motives and aims behind a proposed Description des Arts et Métiers : 'When this work is completed, it will be easy for each craft to compare the practices in vogue in France with those pursued in other countries; and from this comparison, the French and the inhabitants of these foreign lands will profit equally' (cited in Cole and Watts, p.7). Each article has sections on materials, tools and apparatus, proccesses and methods, and illustrations of the métier . The wide range of Arts et Métiers covered nearly every aspect of French industrial and artisan life: coal-mining, organ-building, metal-making, carpentry and cabinet-making, textile manufacture, hat-making, candles, soap, barbering, glass-blowing, and the manufacture of scientific instruments, among other fields. Although the work was very much a separate enterprise, it complements and inspired many articles in Diderot's Encylopédie ; the Desciption des Arts et Métiers and the Encyclopédie were essential to any well-balanced library in France and abroad. The two principal figures involved were Réne Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757) and Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1781?). The former was elected to the Académie aged 25, and had a prodigious output, submitting memoir after memoir on a variety of subjects, mostly relating to pure mathematics and pure science, including his celebrated description of English steel production. Duhamel du Monceau, who succeeded De Réaumur, was interested in applied sciences, in particular chemisty, botany, and mechanics. De Réaumur died before the first cahier appeared, and Du Monceau assumed control of the project sometime after the former's death in 1757. The Académie and the authors of the articles sought help from men with practical experience wherever possible. Other contributors were François Bedos de Celles (1706-1779), Frederick Henrik af Chapman (d.1808), Charles Romme (1744-1805), Michel Ferdinand d'Albert d'Ailly, Duc de Chaulnes (1714-1769), G. Le Compasseur, Marquis de Courtivron (1715-1791), the Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700-1770), Auguste-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy (1732-1789), Jean-Jacques Perret (1730-1784), Charles-Réne Fourcroy de Ramecourt (1715-1791), François Alexandre Pierre de Garcault (fl. 2nd half of the 18th century), Jérome Le Français de Lalande (1732-1807), Jean Jacques Paulet (1740-1826), Jeanne-Marie Roland de la Platière (1734-1793), Nicolas Christiern de Thy, Comte de Milly (1728-1784), and others. The combination of the b