Silk-dyeing.- Macquer (Pierre Joseph) Arte de la Tintura de Sedas, translated by Miguel Geronimo Suarez y Nuñez, first Spanish edition, with final blank at end of both preliminary leaves and main work, 6 folding engraved plates, the final four wormed affecting images, with 2 leaves of contents in neat contemporary ink manuscript tipped in after title, a couple of leaves defective at lower outer corner through paper flaw but no loss to text, ex-library copy with printed silk shelf-label to front pastedown and trace of stamp removed from title causing fraying, contemporary mottled calf, gilt, rubbed, lacking label, 8vo, Madrid, Blas Roman, 1771.

⁂ Scarce treatise on silk-dyeing first published in France in 1763 by a doctor of medicine and professor of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in Paris. Macquer (1718-84) was royal censor and supervisor from 1745 and director of the royal porcelain factory at Sèvres from 1766; the translator, Suarez, was director of the royal silk manufactories in the province of Cadiz from 1764-71. The plates show the different phases and processes of silk-dyeing as well as the tools and vessels required for this.