Small folio (205 x 307 mm). Contemporary half vellum over marbled boards, all edges sprinkled red; (14), 151, (1)pp. the title-page printed in red and black, with a double-page engraved frontispiece bound after the text, engraved portrait after the preliminaries and 44 numbered engraved folding plates (fig. 9 on two plates, not conjoined); the binding rubbed and scuffed, the spine lightly chipped, very light dust marks throughout, otherwise a bright copy, possibly in its original binding, certainly contemporary.

Provenance: Contemporary ownership inscription, noting that the book cost 4 guilders, to the title page; the later ownership of "Karl Schmidt", dated 1871 to the same; most recently in the library of the Viennese collector Werner Habel (1939-2015) with his handwritten and neat ownership stamp, dated 1974, to the flyleaf.

Justly famous manual on artillery, explosives and fireworks by Joseph Furttenbach (1591-1667). The present work is a revised and enlarged edition of the author's Halinitro-pyrobolica first published in 1627 (cf. Lipperheide Qb 36). The finely engraved plates by R. Custos, J. Custos, and M. Rembold show measuring devices, technical details of ordnance, and ballistic trajectories; the engraved plate before the introduction "Reimenweise Erklärung", a rhyming pun on the invention of gunpowder, bears the splendid portrait of the monk Bertold Schwarz at the exact moment of its discovery.

VD 17, 23:230397Z. Honeyman Coll. 1388. Jähns II, 998ff. Graesse II, 647. STC F 1372. Cockle 692. Bibl. Dt. Mus. Libri rari 109. Philip F 130.3. Lotz 30 & 129. Thieme/Becker XXVIII, 146.

Stock number: 1420