This is the third of four posts which will begin with me confessing
that I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. The London Dungeon gang's fortnightly Friday quiz has been maintained into Second Lockdown, during which time Peter Davis of our number wrote, produced and released an entire comic synth musical based on one of his old rounds (British History, 43AD-1066D). Peter also stars in it as both Professor Thorny Buckshaft and performance artist "The Angler". It is haunting and cracking and you can download it for free HERE. For my round this week, I knew I wanted to do something with this beautifully illustrated seventeenth-century special effects/actual science handbook from 1634, I just wasn't sure what. It probably shows. As The Mysteryes of Natvre and Art was split into four "tretises" – "Water Works", "Fyer Workes", "Drawing, Colouring, Painting etc." and "divers Experiments" – and as the first two of these have the oddest illustrations, and we were all waiting for absolute conformation whether or not Biden really had won the US election, I decided to just focus on "Water Works" and "Fyer Works". So which of those first two treatises do the following images come from? Waterworks or Fireworks? That's the quiz. The answers, which are probably more interesting than the questions, are as ever in the comments below...
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AND HERE ARE THE ANSWERS... 1:- Waterworks (although this is a guess, as it comes towards the end of the book and I'm not sure wher "folio 14 and 15" are, but that's definitely a swan on the first level, and raised figures are normally sitting on water tanks which is a massive clue, which is why this is not a great round). 2:- Waterworks again (from "How to compose a great of little piece of Water work". This image was actually a substitution for a candle in a stained glass diving bell being used to attract fish, which I only realised when I got to it actually came from the "tretise" on "divers Experiments" – no pun intended, I assume). 3:- Fireworks (from "three sorts of Fire lances", possibly what we'd call rockets, possibly something far more dangerous). 4:- Waterworks (from "How to make a circular glass", possibly a thermometer?) 5:- Fireworks (from "How to make flying Dragons." We had fun with this picture when we realised the scale, wondering what arrangement if any the maker had with the guy living oppoiste). 6:- Fireworks (from "How to make a Fire-target", although I'm guessing we'd call this a Catherine Wheel). 7:- Waterworks (from "experiments of forcing water by ayre compressed", apparently an aerosol then, but 300 years before it was first patented and 150 years before the aerosol was even conceived of according to wikipedia, which is exciting). 8:- Waterworks (from "To make two images sacrificing, and a Dragon hissing." Water, though. It's hissing water. This was not a popular round.) 9:- Fireworks (from "Another [composition for fireworkes that burn upon, or in the water]", so basically an exploding egg). 10:- Waterworks (from "Hercules shooting at a Dragon, who as soone as he hath shot, hisseth at him." Again, hissing water.)
ReplyDeleteWhat excellent illustrations! While not in the spirit of a quiz, a game of 'what do you think this device does?' would be pretty good as well.
ReplyDeleteThat would definitely have been better, but I'm not entirely sure what a lot of them actually did, other than spit either fire or water. Really I should have made this another multiple choice round.
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