#james basire

[theogonyofbeauty]

A Reconstruction of The Tower of Winds in the Roman Agora in Athens, Engraved in 1762. By James Basire.

[uwmspeccoll]

Decorative Sunday!

These beautiful engravings are from the first volume of The Antiquities of Athens by Scottish archeologist, architect and artist, James Stuart (1713-1788) and British artist and architect, Nicholas Revett (1720-1804), printed in London by John Haberkorn in 1762. 

The Tower of the Winds is an octagonal marble clock tower in the Roman Agora of Athens. It was designed by Andronicus of Cyrrhus around 50 BC. It was a functional structure that contained sundials, a waterclock, and a wind vane. It is an ancient equivalent of a modern day meteorological station. The building became more widely known outside of Greece because of Stuart and Revett, who were among the first to document the antiquities and monuments of Athens in great architectural detail. Their work is noted for fueling the Greek Revival, an architectural movement in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. When the first volume was published they had more than five hundred subscribers, mostly architects and builders. 

The engravings were made by the British engraver James Basire (1730-1802), who specialized in prints depicting architecture. Artwork by Basire is held in museums throughout the world. He is also known for having the young William Blake (1757-1827) as an apprentice for seven years. 

The well known artist William Hogarth (1697-1764) published a satirical print called The Five Orders of Periwigs in which he classifies the ridiculous wigs that were in fashion at the time into “orders” with greatly detailed measurements. This was a direct satire of Stuart and Revett’s work and similar work of which he said “It requires nor more skill to take the dimensions of a pillar or cornice, than to measure a square box.”

The tower’s frieze depicts the eight winds in bas-relief represented figuratively as gods, the Anemoi: Zephyrus, the West wind; Boreas, the North wind; Kaikias, the North East wind; Apeliotes, the East wind; Eurus, the South East wind; Notus, the South wind; Lips, the South West wind; and Sciron, the North West wind. 

Apeliotes, The East Wind.

Eurus, The South East Wind.

Notos, The South Wind.

Lips, The South West Wind.

Sciron, The North West Wind.

View more Decorative Sunday posts. 

-Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[theogonyofbeauty]

Sciron, the north-west wind.

[uwmspeccoll]

Science Saturday

THE DISCOVERY OF OXYGEN

This week we highlight the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by the English chemist, theologian, and political theorist Joseph Priestley as recorded in his Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, published in 6 volumes from 1774–86. We hold the first three volumes which were originally published in 1774, 1775, and 1777, respectively. Our three volumes are from various editions, however: Volume 1 is the corrected 3rd edition, 1781; Volume 2 is the 2nd edition, 1784; volume 3 is the 1st edition, 1777. All were published in London by the noted English publisher Joseph Johnson, who remained a close friend of Priestley’s for over 40 years until the latter’s death in 1804.

The “Kinds of Air” noted in the title refer to gases generally. In these volumes Priestley outlines the discovery of several gases: nitric oxide, anhydrous hydrochloric acid, ammonia, nitrous oxide, but most importantly oxygen, which he famously referred to as "dephlogisticated air," or a gas that has the theoretical substance phlogiston removed from it. Phlogiston was believed to be a fire-like element contained in all substances that could be burned, releasing the phlogiston in the air. This was the basis for the longstanding but erroneous phlogiston theory, which Priestley held to for the rest of his life. It appears that the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier and the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, made independent discoveries of oxygen around the same time as Priestley. It was Lavoisier’s later experiments on oxygen in the 1780s that culminated in the overthrow of phlogiston theory and the establishment of modern chemistry.  

The first three volumes of Priesley’s Experiments and Observations include four, fold-out plates of Priestley’s experimental instruments shown here:

The first two are from volume 1 and serve as the frontispiece and the final illustration at the back of the volume (that our former graduate intern Katie famously referred to as the “backispiece”). We show the original copperplate etchings along with reconstructed illustrations found at beautifulchemistry.net/priestley, and with a photorealistic CG reconstruction of plate one. Of plate one, beautifulchemistry notes:

The trough with a platform on one side was essential to [Priestley’s] experiments: collecting gases, transferring gases, and other experiments were all performed inside this trough. Priestley prepared many gases, including nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, hydrogen chloride, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, some of which were first discovered by him. . . . For gases that dissolved in water, he used mercury to collect them. Priestley carefully studied the physical and chemical properties of many gases. He also discovered that plants could absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. However, he did not study the function of light in this process.

Of plate two, the same website notes:

Priestley improved [Stephen Hales’s] apparatus for preparing gas at high temperature. Through ingenious design, he studied reactions of gases under electrical spark. . . . In 1774, [Priestley] prepared oxygen by heating mercury oxide with a burning glass. He found that oxygen did not dissolve in water and it made combustion stronger. . . . He proposed that the intense combustion inside oxygen was due to oxygen contained no or very little phlogiston and it easily absorbed phlogiston from other substances. As a result, he called oxygen “dephlogisticated air” and nitrogen, which did not support combustion, “phlogisticated air.”

The next two etching are the frontispieces for volumes three and four, respectively, illustrating other equipment used in experiments to test different aspects of air and oxygen, and to produce oxygen from various reactions. These plates indicate that they were prepared by the British engraver James Basire.

View other Science Saturday posts.

[archivedart]

Landscape with Sleeping Man at Right

James Basire I, English, 1730 - 1802

[huldrapress]

James Basire, Engraving of the Rosetta Stone, 1810.