Tomo duodecimo.
This is a plate volume from an eighteenth-century Italian encyclopedia of the mechanical arts, with engraved plates of workshop machinery and trades, held by the Eisenbibliothek Schlatt. The pictures show a coin-rolling press for flattening silver and gold, a wheel for grinding and polishing glass and mirrors, a glassworks furnace hall, and a diamond-cutting lathe worked by seated craftsmen, all drawn in precise line with labelled numbered parts. A designer might take from them the spare, technical line of copperplate machinery diagrams, with their sectional views and small figures set against plain paper.
