Nouvelle invention de lever l’eau plus hault que sa source avec quelques machines movantes par le moyen de l’eau et un discours de la conduite d’ycelle …

London : [s.n.], 1644.

1 volume ; 36 cm

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Great Britain -- England -- London, -- publication place.

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From dealer's description: "WONDROUS WATERWORKS #23| CAUS, Isaac de. Nouvelle invention de lever l’eau plus hault que sa source avec quelques machines movantes par le moyen de l’eau et un discours de la conduite d’ycelle … [London, 1644.] Folio, pp. [2], 32, with 26 copperengraved plates; with letterpress title but without the engraved title-page (see below), blank leaf bound between pp. 16 and 17; numerous woodcut diagrams printed in text, woodcut initials, woodcut head- and tailpieces; a little foxed throughout with a few spots, 3 plates protruding at fore-edge and consequently chipped, some losses to lower margins of plates XXIV-XXVI with one small hole touching engraving of plate XXVI; stab-stitched as issued and preserved loose in nearcontemporary carta rustica, notarial mark with initials ‘A.D.’ and date ‘1659’ in ink to front cover; stitching partially perished, some losses to spine. $4500 First edition of this important work on hydraulics and automata by the French garden designer and architect Isaac de Caus (1590– 1648), illustrated with twenty-six handsome copper-engraved plates and numerous woodcuts. A Huguenot from Dieppe, De Caus arrived in England in the early 1620s and specialised in the design and construction of grottos and waterworks, most famously the grottos in Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House in Whitehall, and at Wilton House in Wiltshire, built for the fourth Earl of Pembroke. His Nouvelle invention was based closely upon the 1615 treatise Les raisons des forces mouvantes by his relative Salomon de Caus, and several of the illustrations are derived therefrom. The first sixteen pages comprise a series of propositions relating to the theory of fluid mechanics and a description of a machine for raising water above its source, illustrated with numerous woodcuts. The remaining text describes each of the following twenty-six plates, which depict waterwheels, a horse mill, various water clocks, a solar-powered fountain, a water-powered sawmill, a firefighting engine, a sluice for navigating canals, and automata for imitating singing and drinking birds and the music of flageolets and organs, and for representing Galatea and Neptune gliding across the water in grottos. The books is found in three states, with a letterpress title (as here), an engraved title, or – in very few copies – with both. A second edition appeared in 1657, describing de Caus on the title-page as engineer and architect to Charles I, with an English translation by John Leak following in 1659 (New and rare Inventions of Water-Works). ESTC R35943." Ordered from Bernard Quaritch Ltd., D9723, 2024-04-05, Cat. "64th new york International Antiquarian Book Fair", item #23

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