My book Grand escalier du chateau de versailles is about the great stairways in the Chateau of Versailles. To find books with the same or similar topics, I searched Alice by the keywords “stairs” and “chateau versailles”. Alice proposed a lot of different books, featuring either the topic “stairs” or the topic “chateau versailles” but never the two combined in one book. I continued by searching one keyword at the time. As I searched Alice by “chateau versailles”, I was surprised how little books there were, containing information about the building, while it being such a famous relic of architecture history. Generally, the books, that Alice suggested to me were mostly books about modern architecture, including references to the Chateau Versailles, however none about the history or concept/construction of the Chateau.
As I searched “stairs”/”staircase” I, again, found a lot of books about modern architecture theory. Some actually had a chapter or two about constructing staircases, others only matched, because “stairs”/”staircases” is somewhere written in the book, which was a bit misleading. Eventually I was able to find two books, which were about similar themes as mine.
The first book is Elements of architecture by Rem Koolhaas. The book is separated into chapters, each one addressing a different element of architecture, such as doors, windows, ceilings etc. The chapters are very elaborate, some of them reaching over 100 pages of pictures, citations and theories about the element. At page 170, one reaches the element “stairs”. The chapter is over 150 pages long and discusses how stairs are constructed, what their purpose is in a building and how the style of designing staircases changed over the course of time.
The second book is called Recuils des figures, groups, thermes, fontaines, vases, statues et autres ornemens de Versailles by Thomasin. It is very similar to my book. Like my book, it almost exclusively consists of “Kupferstiche”, however not just of staircases, statues and paintings like in my book, but also of fountains, vases, ornaments etc., as mentioned in the title. Even the coverdesign of the book is very similar to mine. Both books are dedicated to Louis Le Grand (King Louis the 14th).