Nikolaus Pevsner , Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University, talks about a book by a northern French architect of the thirteenth century
Personal information on the lives, methods, and tastes of medieval architects is so rare that the survival of Villard de Honnecourt 's book is a piece of good fortune. It is written and illustrated for the benefit of his apprentices and assistants, and contains an amazing amount of miscellaneous matters from timber construction and rules of proportion to sculpture, mechanical gadgets, and even quack prescriptions.