Designs of Chinese buildings, furniture, dresses, machines, and utensils / Engraved by the best hands from the originals drawn in China by Mr. Chambers, architect, member of the Imperial Academy of Arts at Florence ; To which is annexed a description of their temples, houses, gardens, &c.

Bound with Chambers, A treatise on civil architecture (London, 1759).
Apparently first edition. Cf. Graesse, v. 2, p. 113; and Bibliotheca Britannica, by Robert Watt, v. 1, 210 p.
"[The importance of this book] consists chiefly in being the first to examine Chinese buildings as architecture"--Harris and Savage, British architectural Books and writers, 1556-1785, p. 156.
"[It was] the first by an English author to bring forward authentic evidence of Chinese architecture, superceding the vague chinoiseries borrowed from France by such designers as the Halfpennys"--Sir John Summerson, History of architecture in Britain, p. 241.
Sir John Summerson's account of laying out gardens among the Chinese was also important. This work is also important in furniture history as it contains the earliest English illustrations of authentic Chinese costumes.
Illustration: 21 full plates, engraving. Thirteen plates engraved by P. Fourdrinier; the rest by I. Fougeron, C. Grignion, E. Rooker and P. Sandby.