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FINE COPY OF SPLENDID HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING DRAWINGS
HORST, Tileman van der and Jacob POLLEY. Theatrum Machinarum Universale; of keurige verzameling van verscheide grote en zeer fraaie Waterwerken, Schutsluizen, Waterkeringen, Ophaal- en Draaibruggen. Met hare gronden, opstallen en doorgesnedens; ... I. [-II.] deel.
Amsterdam, Petrus Schenk [II] & son (vol. II: Petrus Schenk [III]), 1757-1774. Imperial folio (50 x 34 cm). With 2 title-pages in red and black, each with the same engraved allegorical device, a double-page engraved dedication plate (with 2 large cartouches showing the arms of the Beemster polder and of the 9 members of its water authority) and 41 double-page and 7 larger folding engraved illustration plates, the folding plates numbered as 2 to give plates I-XXV (vol. I), I-XXIV and I-VI (vol. II). Further with 1 woodcut tail-piece and bands of cast fleurons. Half red roan, blue-grey paper sides (ca. 1800).
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Second edition of both volumes of a remarkably detailed set of scale construction drawings (plans, sections, elevations, perspective views, etc., including many detail drawings of individual parts) of eighteenth-century Dutch waterworks, with the accompanying letterpress descriptions and notes. It includes locks, sluices, bridges, pumps, pile drivers, an ice-breaker, an elaborate water-bailing mill and more. Most of the plates measure about 45 x 54 cm, with the folding ones about 52 x 76 cm. At least most of the plates depict existing works, and the text occasionally gives some historical information. The half-title, probably intended to cover both volumes, gives the subtitle "Groote Waterwerken." Volume one (by Horst) and volume two (by Polley) were first published by Petrus Schenk II in 1736-1737. Since the publication apparently aimed to show off the most up-to-date Dutch hydraulic and civil engineering, most of the works shown were built around 1730. The drawings are so detailed and give such a clear picture of how the mechanisms functioned that one could use them to reconstruct the works shown. The publisher Petrus Schenk II (1693-1775) may have initiated the book, for he had published a book of windmill construction drawings under the same title in 1734 and followed the first edition of the waterworks by another on carpentry in 1739. The present 1757 edition of volume one is sometimes found with the 1737 edition of volume two, and the present 1774 edition of volume two with the later undated edition of volume one.
Horst and Schenk produced another print of the ice-breaker (64 x 94 cm), perhaps for its fiftieth anniversary in 1746, and it is occasionally bound with copies of the book, but it is not an integral part of the publication and is not included here.
A fine copy, nearly untrimmed, with only some false folds in the half-title and an occasional minor defect in the paper. Plate 23 in volume 1 has no number, but it may have been trimmed off at the head. The inside front hinge has partly separated from the book-block, but the binding is otherwise good. A fine copy of a magnificent display of Dutch hydraulic engineering.
