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A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts, and Interesting Experiments, Which Are Well Explained and Warranted Genuine and May be Performed Easily, Safely, and at Little Expense.
Concord, [N.H.]: Published by Rufus Porter, J. B. Moore, Printer, 1826. 16mo (6.625” x 4”), marbled paper over boards, later red cloth spine. [2], half-title, frontis., viii, [9]–132 pp. Second illus. at p. 122, facing appendix. Early ownership and presentation inscriptions in ink and pencil at ffep (“Christmas 1956 [i.e., 1856] Rufus to Sam”); p. [1] (“John A Soasy[?] Boston Sept 28 1836”); and p. [3] (“Fred W G. May from Ely before embarking for China 1858”). A few additional pencil annotations to initial and final leaves. CONDITION: Very good, covers worn, rubbed at extremities, occasional light foxing and toning to contents, as usual, with a few very minor spots of soiling. Stated second edition, presumed second printing of this important and enthusiastically wide-ranging work of popular artistic and scientific instruction by the “Yankee Da Vinci” and founder of Scientific American. Among the most popular works in a wave of art instruction books in the wake of American independence, Curious Arts was first published in a small edition—without a copyright—in 1820, printed by J. T. Peters of Concord, Massachusetts. A revised, enlarged edition under the present altered title appeared in 1825, printed by Jacob B. Moore of Concord, New Hampshire. With its 116 brief chapters, the volume is “a personally selected compendium of practical art recipes, simple experiments in general science and the tricks of a number of trades. The chances are that most of the arts described…—from glass painting and etching to painting carpets and wallpapers—were at some time attempted by the author, and a number of them Porter had practiced professionally” (Lipman, p. 78). In addition to sections on “Landscape painting on walls of rooms,” “Copper plate engraving,” and instructions “To make good shining black ink,” the volume contains wide-ranging assortment of more fanciful recipes for “Sympathetic inks for secret correspondence” and “Luminous ink that will shine in the dark”; “To change wood, apparently, to stone” and “to render, wood, cloth or paper fire proof”; “To make sky rockets and fire wheels”; “To kindle a fire under water” and (thanks to a recent discovery by Sir Humphrey Davy) “To light a candle by application of ice,” and more. One rather cruel trick, “To change the colours of animals,” relies on the application of “any substance that will blister the skin” directly to the animal’s shaven body. A final section, titled “Sundry experiments,” provides single-sentence instructions for a variety of curiosities of chemistry and physics. The frontispiece, titled “Sketches of Landscapes,” comprises three scenes, possibly intended as models for murals: a boy resting beneath a tree, with fields in the distance; three youngsters playing with a kite, hoops, and sticks, and a peaceful homestead. The illustration facing the appendix shows a “classical building with a cupola that symbolized learned institutions. This image was [Abel] Bowen’s cut of the Hanover Medical School,” originally accomplished for John Farmer’s Gazetteer of the State of New-Hampshire, “now assuming a purported new identity as the Boston Dispensary,” which is recommended in the appendix as a reliable source for many of the materials mentioned in the volume (Sprague and Wolff, p. 28). Rufus Porter (1792–1884) was an inventor, itinerant painter, writer, and founder of the Scientific American. Born in Boxford Mass. he was raised in Maine, where he began his career as a sign and house painter, later living in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York City. He traveled widely throughout the northeast and as far south as Virginia, painting the portraits and murals for which he is perhaps best known. Porter was a tireless inventor of a wide variety of useful machines, apparatuses, and improvements—some fully realized and others not—including the self-adjusting cheese press, two carpenter’s levels, an elevated railroad, turbine water wheels, windmills, flying ships, a car for moving houses, a combined chair and cane, a revolving almanack, and more. A very good copy of this popular handbook of science and art by a pioneering New England contributor to American art and invention. REFERENCES: Shaw & Shoemaker 26045; Rink, Evald. Technical Americana 207; Lipman, Jean. Rufus Porter : Yankee Pioneer (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1968); Sprague, Laura Fecych and Justin Wolff. Rufus Porter’s Curious World : Art and Invention in America, 1815–1860 (2019).
Item #9502
Price: $1,750.00
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