58. Johnson, Stephen William.
RURAL ECONOMY: / CONTAINING / A TREATISE / ON PISÉ
BUILDING; / As recommended by the Board of Agriculture in Great
Britain, / with Improvements by the Author; / On Buildings in general;
/ Particularly on the Arrangement of those belonging to Farms: / On
the Culture of the Vine; AND / ON TURNPIKE ROADS. / WITH
PLATES. / BY S. W. JOHNSON. / New Brunswick, N.J. / Printed by
William Elliot, / FOR I. RILEY & CO. NO. 1, CITY-HOTEL,
BROADWAY, / NEW-YORK. / 1806.
8vo. Half title (1 leaf); title page ([i]); dedication ([iii]); preface ([v]vi);
table of contents ([vii]-viii); text ([1]-246); index (2 leaves); 8
anonymously engraved plates.
Stephen William Johnson was master in chancery at New Brunswick,
N.J. See Plate LIII for his dedication of this book to Jefferson.
The volume is divided into a series of books on each of the subjects
listed on the title page. That on pisé building has an acknowledgment
of the author's debt to Cointeraux (No. 30) and gives the derivation of
the term:
. . . As late only as the year 1791 a work was published at Paris, by
M. Francois Cointeraux, containing an account of a mode of building
strong and durable houses with no other materials than earth; and which had
been practised for ages in the province of Lyons, though little known in any
other part of France or in Europe. [P. 1]
The French of the Lyonese terrotory [sic], in their vernacular idiom,
call their mode of building Pisé, which . . . has its derivation from the
name of the instrument with which the walls are rammed and made into a
solid compact body, called in French, Pisoir; having a figure essentially different
from any thing called in English a rammer. [P. 4]
In spite of the dedication, Jefferson sold his copy to Congress. He
did not order the book for the University, whose copy is a recent acquisition,
the gift of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.
M
Sowerby 1178
*TH1421.J7.1806
Jombert, Charles Antoine. Bibliothèque portative d'architecture élémentaire,
à l'usage des artistes. Paris, 1764-66. See Nos. 46, 91, 111c,
and 123a.
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