Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, faites ou approuvées par messieurs de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (French for "Descriptions of the Arts and Trades, made under the direction of the gentlemen of the Royal Academy of Sciences"), is a collection of books on crafts that was published by the Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences between 1761 and 1788. The full series comprises 113 folio volumes along with three supplements, and provide detailed accounts of a wide range of handcraft and manufacturing processes carried out in France at that time. The volumes are well-illustrated, with precise engravings by Jean Elie Bertrand (1737–1779) a noted typographer from Neuchâtel, where the printing was done. Many of them provide the background for shorter articles in Diderot's Encyclopedia, which was ap