(Rolled Lead Sheeting)
Mémoire sur le plomb laminé, qui se fabrique à Paris et à Déville-lès-Rouen ; à la suite duquel on a ajoutè … les rapports des Académies des Sciences et d’Architecture de Paris ; le procès-verbal des Fontainiers du Roi (etc).
Orléans, Imprimerie de Mme Ve. Huet-Perdoux 1822.
Full Description
8vo. (4) + 51 + (1)pp. Sewn as issued, the half-title leaf and the blank verso of the last leaf slightly soiled and creased.
This very scarce pamphlet, apparently printed for A. Le Normant, a supplier of rolled lead sheeting with premises at 103 Rue Bannier, Orléans, reveals that despite Remond de Saint-Albine’s best efforts in the second quarter of the eighteenth century (see previous item), it was still necessary in the 1820s for manufacturers of rolled lead to argue the case for their product. The pamphlet presents the argument for the use of rolled lead in considerable detail, and benefits substantially from the fact that by 1822 it was possible for its anonymous author to cite the use of lead sheeting for the roofs of specific buildings in Paris and Rouen, although he also reprints the original reports utilised by Remond de Saint-Albine. The manufacturers of rolled lead in whose interests it was produced were based in Paris and Rouen, and it is a little puzzling that the pamphlet should have been printed in Orléans, presumably on the initiative of their local agent (who may of course have himself been the author of the pamphlet). If there was an earlier Paris or Rouen printing, we have not traced it, and no copy of the present printing, or of any other printing, is discoverable in NUC.