Recueil de planches, sur les sciences, les arts libéraux, et les arts méchaniques : avec leur explication ..
This is a plate from Diderot and d'Alembert's 1762 Recueil de planches, an eighteenth-century French encyclopedia published in Paris by the Briasson, David, Le Breton and Durand firm for a readership of scholars and craftsmen. The four plates shown are engraved technical drawings of theatre machinery, including a floor plan of a theatre, a stage section, a gold-thread winding machine and wheel and pulley mechanisms. For a designer they offer crisp, measured linework, labelled captions and clean schematic diagrams of mechanical parts.
