The book ‘La théorie et la pratique de la coupe des pierres et des bois, pour la construction des voutes et autres parties des bâtimens civils & militaires, ou traité de stéréotomie à l’usage de l’architecture’ begins with an introduction and is followed by the table of contents and the first chapter.
The text on the front page is partly written in red and there is an illustration of Marie and her son and some different tools and weapons of its decade at the bottom of the page. The pages are mostly filled with text and the columns are not perfectly centered. They are slightly shifted to the inner part of the book, where the pages are held together. Therefore, the margin on the outer side is bigger than the part in the center of the book. The font is rather large and is comparable to font type ‘Times’. The Headers are written in large letters and there are different illustration or patterns above the text. Each page has the page number and the header, which is split up by the double pages, at the top.
Apart of the front page, there is no use of colour for text and images.
There are only few illustrations in the book and mostly they’re some kind of pattern, which are either at the top of the header or randomly at the end of a chapter. Because they have no further use, they’re not numbered or listed in a commentary. Compared to the text, the images are of no importance whatsoever. They are just for decoration.
Considering the immense portion of text in the book, I would say it leads to an intensive study. The reader has no illustration which could lead to a better comprehension. He has to use his memories and experience to understand the text correctly and, in my opinion, a technical topic such like this can easily be misunderstood.