?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
Besson, Jacques (1540?-1573) Theatre des Instrumens Mathemetiques & Mechaniques.
Lyon: Barthelemy Vincent, 1578.
First French edition, folio, title page printed within large woodcut compartment featuring classical figures and cherubs with mathematical instruments; with nineteen unnumbered leaves of text and sixty full-page plates of inventions; bound in later half leather and patterned paper boards, worn; early ownership inscription to title; top outside blank corner of title page and following leaf torn away and very neatly restored; ten leaves of the text portion stained with a large semi-circular pale brown discoloration worse where it originates, fading out in both directions in adjacent pages; the plates somewhat faint, text on plates sometimes traced in pen for legibility; final plate torn and crumpled, repaired on verso; 14 3/4 x 10 1/4 in.
Besson's popular work contains a bevy of ingenious devices, including mills run by men & horses, devices useful at the sawmill, along with a variety of presses & pumps, wells, fountains, a fire fighting device, a musical instrument, an adjustable reading stand, various hoists, including some used for boats in seaports, and many other inventions.
