The Cabinet of Useful Arts and Manufactures. Designed for the instruction of Young Persons.

10 full-page wood-engraved illustrations, contemporary calf, ruled in gilt, red morocco label to spine, rebacked, 12mo Dublin, Christopher Bentham, 1820.

Manufacturing trades are represented by glass, porcelain, linen, rope-making, wool, silk, hats, leather, paper, sugar, and salt, while the useful arts are represented by printing calico, founding type, letterpress printing, and book binding. Coming at the end of the volume, and seeming to fall somewhere between a useful art and manufacturing, is brewing. It has an early reference to bookbinding in calico. ‘The outside covering which is generally either of calf or sheep skin, or sometimes of linen or calico…’.

A rare first edition of this title, with later editions over the following decade printed at Dublin, London, and New York. (Osbourne Collection, p. 110: Dublin, Thos. Courtney, 1821).