JF Ptak Science Books
Amedee Couder, L’architecture et l’industrie comme moyen de perfection sociale, published by Brockhaus and Avenarius in Paris, 1842. 13 x 10 inches, 52 pp, 9 plates, including 4 large folding architectural plans. Large-margin copy, signed presentation by Couder on the title page. Bound with a decorated calf spine, pebbled cloth boards with tips. From the Julius Frank library, given to the Brooklyn Public Library, and then deaccessioned. There are a few old library markings on the title page, as well as two bookplates, plus an old (19th c) card holder at back. A nice, solid copy, with beautiful images. Scarce. $325
Amedee Couder wrote L’Architecture et l’industrie comme moyen de perfection sociale, a fine work that was published in Paris (by Brockhaus et Avenarius) in 1842. The work presents Couder’s rather stroing visionary plans for a perfect city of industrial and scientific harmony, laid out in suggestively-fractal harmony, with the suggestions of a Renaissance-laden snowflake design. Whatever it was, it was beautiful to look at, at least on paper, though I’m not so certain that I’d care to live in the canyonlands of stone and shadow on the other side of the garden wall of the perfect scientific-industrial conclave.
