Produced by an Italian craftsman in the latter portion of the seventeenth century, the model presented below is a wooden tripod compound microscope. This elegant work is described and illustrated in a short treatise entitled Microscopes to the End of the Nineteenth Century by F. W. Palmer and A. B. Sahiar.

The legs and collar of the microscope are not original, indicating the microscope was probably restored at a later date. The objective has the usual bi-convex lens, but the eyepiece tube has three lenses. Internally, the microscope has a field lens and a doublet of bi-convex lenses. The nosepiece of the microscope is threaded to fit into the tripod base and allow focusing of the specimen. With the exception of the glass lenses, tube covering, and ivory stage, the microscope is composed entirely of wood.

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