General subject of the book
In the book “Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bastir à petits fraiz” Philibert de l’Orme presents new techniques and materials to build more efficiently. I did my best reading a bit of the beginning and it was about the use of wood in France and other parts of the world.
Organisation of the book
It begins with a rather long introduction which might have been normal at that time. He splits it in various parts where he always directs to another group of readers of his book. Then the book consists of two books actually, which are just the first and the second volume. Each book is divided into two parts; the first one “nouvelles” then “inventions”.
As much as I understood it the “nouvelles” is more material based and the part “inventions” is about new buidling techniques for these materials.
Each of this parts is then divided into chapters. The text itself has no paragraphs but on the side of the text there are small titles to each subject mentioned.
It has about one illustration for every three pages and the illustrations are rather big, often almost a full page with only little text.
Size of the book
The book measures 270x200x20mm. It is an in-quarto format. It has 140 pages.