JOUSSE, Mathurin

Le Secret d'architecture découvrant fidèlement les traits géométriques, couppes, et dérobemens nécessaires dans les bastiments

      La Flèche George Griveau 1642 folio, [8], 228 p., with 112 (misnumbered 113) full-page woodcut illustrations, of which 12 are folding, some slight browning of the paper & a few light stains, but good copy in contemporary limp vellum Fowler 160; Millard I, 82; Berlin Kat. 2538. Only edition, and an interesting provincial imprint, from La Flèche in the Loire region. Jousse (1607- 1692) also wrote treatises on locks and on carpentry, but here he tackles a more difficult technical subject for architects and master masons, ‘stereotomy’, or the application of geometry to stone-cutting. Philibert de l’Orme had touched on this, but Jousse supersedes his work. Some of the illustrations are similar to the drawings Jousse did for the French edition of Pélerin’s book on perspective. As the only really thorough practical handbook available the book was read to pieces, and is very rare today; it is significant that the only recent copy at auction, from the superb Macclesfield library, was seriously imperfect. OCLC records in 3 American libraries, U.Penn., Yale and the Canadian Center; Millard references the copy at National Gallery in Washington; at least at the time of NUC there was one at Boston Public. In 1984 this copy passed through the hands of E.P.Goldschmidt (with their stock code), who listed it at $9500 (then between £7000 and £8000): ‘the first copy we have ever seen’.