Folding Surgical Knives, Diderot Chirurgie Plate VIII, circa 1772

An original antique copper engraving, uncolored, laying out eight instruments in horizontal rows across the plate. At the top is a small knife with a hooked point on a turned wooden handle (Fig. 1), followed by a long slender rod with a closed oval eye at one end and a strongly hooked tip at the other (Fig. 2) and a knife with a curved, pointed blade on a flat handle (Fig. 3). The center of the plate is taken up by four large folding knives with broad mottled scales and ornamental pivot rivets, their blades drawn open and cut to different profiles: straight and pointed (Fig. 4), broad and flaring to a blunt point (Fig. 5), broad with a rounded end (Fig. 6) and curved to a point (Fig. 7). Across the foot runs a long rod ending in a flat, heart shaped button (Fig. 8).

The plate number "Pl. VIII." is lettered at the top right outside the border, the section title "Chirurgie." is centered below the border, and the page number "69." is at the lower left. The first figure is lettered "Fig. 1.ere". It is signed at the lower right, just below the border, with the conjoined AB monogram followed by "s.", the mark the Venetian engraver Antonio Baratti used on the Livorno plates (his full signature, "Antonio Baratti s.", is lettered on Pl. XII of this section).

The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert was accompanied by volumes of engraved plates, the Recueil de planches, and this plate comes from their Chirurgie section in the Livorno edition published by Giuseppe Aubert, whose plate volumes appeared between 1771 and 1778. Each numbered figure is keyed to an explanation printed in the text volume, which is not part of the sheet.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.