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Author |
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Title Plans, elevations, sections and perspective views of the gardens and buildings at Kew in Surrey, |
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Published, Date Haberkorn for the author, London,1763. |
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Description Folio, title, dedication leaf, 8pp. text, 43 engraved plates and plans by Rooker, Woollett, Grignion, Paul Sandby, et al., after William Kent, Chambers, Smeaton, Sandby, Cipriani, and others, uncut, modern half calf gilt, a fine copy. |
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Note First edition of this superb record of the early architectural high points of the Royal Horticultural Society's most famous garden. "The short text provided by way of introduction to the plates describes the intended route through the garden, beginnning at the palace, proceeding to the Greenhouse or Orangery, the Temple of the Sun, on to the enclosed Physic or Exotic Garden, then to the Flower Garden and Aviary, and the Menagerie or Pheasant Garden with its Chinese Pavilion and so on. The forty-three plates were arranged roughly in this sequence ... Though Chambers offers no hint of the significance intended by the extraordinary array of pavilions and features, it is clear that he was leading his visitors through an image of the world, both past and present ... Several themes are invoked, Frederick's [The Prince of Wales] exotic interests; the advance in husbandry, botany, and engineering in contemporary Britain; and most significantly, its new imperial role. The building of Kew coincides precisely with the waging of the Seven Years' War, the first truly global conflict. Britain's empire is commemorated again and again. Thus the ruined arch on one side of the great lawn is countered on the other by the Gothic cathedral - the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire even, overtaken by an image of British faith. The Temple of Victory, intended to commemorate the Battle of Minden, of 1 August 1759 - when the French were defeated by combined British and Hanoverian force under Augusta's brother, was set midway in the garden, on a mount, serving as a platform to view both the palace at one end and the Great Pagoda at the other. At the far end of the meadow three buildings were erected to mark the ends of the earth - the Turkish mosque and the Alhambra, facing one another on a cross-axis, denoting the eastern and western ends of the Mediterranean trading basin, and, at the furthest point, the Great Pagoda, rivaling in height Nanking's Porcelain Tower, an emblem of the civilization most remote from Britain, but nonetheless clearly open to mercantile endeavour" - Millard. |
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References Millard, British Books, 14; Berlin Kat. 2337; Fowler 87. |
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Stock Number 85881 |
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