Amusements utiles et curieux : expériences faites et à faire.

Format:

• Book
• Manuscript

Contributor:

• Chappon, Pierre, active 18th century, former owner.

Language:

• French
• Latin

Subjects (All):

• Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions--Early works to 1800.
• Cooking, French--Early works to 1800.
• Natural history--Pre-Linnean works.
• Electricity--Experiments--Early works to 1800.
• Cooking, French.
• Electricity--Experiments.
• Medicine.
• Natural history.

Genre:

• Manuscripts, European.
• Manuscripts, French -- 18th century.
• codices (bound manuscripts)
• miscellanies
• Early works.
• Excerpts.
• Prescriptions, formulae, receipts, etc.
• Recipes.

Penn Provenance:

• Possibly compiled by M. De Fosse or M. De Fosseux (spine label).
• Formerly owned by Pierre Chappon, late 18th century, possibly the French doctor and author P. Chappon, 1749-1810 (owner inscription, p. iv).
• Offered for sale at auction by Chauviré Courant (Angers), 30 May 2018, lot 417.
• Offered for sale by Bonnefoi Livres Anciens (Paris), catalog 185, number 40.
• Sold by Ben Kinmont (Sebastapol, California), 2019.

Physical Description:

164 leaves : paper ; 187 x 144 (148 x 106) mm bound to 196 x 155 mm.

Place of Publication:

Arras, 1753.

Language Note:

French, with two Latin epigraphs (p. 1).

Summary:

Collection of recipes and practical and informational articles on medicinal, culinary, horticultural, metallurgical, and other household and scientific topics (including a 1752 article on electricity referring to Benjamin Franklin and the French translation, published in 1752, of his Experiments and observations on electricity, published in 1751, p. 31-44). The articles are largely copied, not in order of publication, from 1751 and 1752 issues of the Journal oeconomique, a journal published in Paris from 1751 to 1772. A few articles are copied from Noël Chomel's Dictionnaire oeconomique, which was published in several editions in the first half of the 18th century. A table of contents at the end, written on pages that seem to be marked in the upper outer corners with letters for an index, is also in the hand of the compiler. Additional recipes, mostly medical, have been added by a slightly later hand at the end (p. 290-309), along with corresponding entries at the end of the table of contents (p. 326-328).

Notes:

• Ms. codex.
• Title from title page (p. v).
• Pagination: Paper, iii + 164 leaves; [i-vi], 1-309, [310-328]; contemporary pagination in ink, modern pagination in pencil, upper outer corners.
• Layout: Written in 20 long lines; quarto format.
• Script: Written in a semicursive script by a single hand (p. 1-290, 311-326), with additional recipes and table of contents entries written in cursive script by another later hand, perhaps that of former owner Pierre Chappon (p. 290-309, 326-328).
• Decoration: Ornamental border drawn and stamped in black and green ink on title page (p. 5); text block border on all pages in ink; frontispiece formed from two printed maps, the upper half Environs de Paris and the lower half France Ecclesiastique, with a simple border in ink (p. iv).
• Binding: Contemporary (18th-century) marbled calf (Kinmont), blind-tooled, gilt spine with spine title AMUSEM CURIEUX DE M. DE FOSSE; marbled endpapers.
• Origin: Written in Arras, France, dated 1753 (title page, p. v).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 2033.

OCLC:

1137015989