The Practical House Carpenter; or, Youth’s Instructor: containing a Great Variety of Useful Designs in Carpentry and Architecture, as Centering for Groins, Niches, &c. Examples for Roofs, Sky-lights, &c. The Five Orders laid down by a new Scale. Mouldings, &c., at large, with their Enrichments. Plans, Elevations, and Sections of Houses for Town and Country, Lodges, Hot-houses, Green-houses, Stables, &c. Design for a Church, with Plan, Elevation, and two Sections, an Altar-piece, and Pulpit. Designs for Chimney-pieces, Shop-fronts, Door-cases. Section of a Dining-room and Library. Variety of Stair-cases: with many other important Articles, and useful Embellishments…
148 engraved plates (several double-page and one double-page & folding). 3 p.l., 15 leaves of explanatory text. 4to, cont. marbled sheep (joints well-repaired), flat spine gilt. London: J. Taylor, 1823.
The “Ninth Edition” and a fine copy. The first edition appeared in 1788. Pain “was constantly in print either with a new book — he published eleven between 1758 and 1793 — or with a revised enlarged edition of an earlier one. In America the demand for his books exceeded that of any other eighteenth-century English author…
“Intending ‘plainly and faithfully to answer the purpose of the manual artificer’, he pared his text to essential instructions and wherever possible engraved these on the plates themselves for the convenience of working users. The plates are the raison d’être of his books. They are clear, unpretentious, undeceptive outline representations of whole parts…and of details in a scale large enough to work from.”–Harris, pp. 338-39.
Scarce. The plates are numbered 1-146, with the additional “Back Plate 3” and “Face Plate 65.”
❧ Harris 660.
Price: $950.00
Item ID: 6877
