#practical geometry

* advertisement for silk wire frames (cropped from page; levels 50 1.00 245) Spring and Summer Styles, 1906, Blumenfeld, Locher & Brown Co. The best frames in the United States for the money. All hand made of silk covered wire. Much better than machine-made or mercerized cotton wire frames. in Millinery Trade Review 31 (1906) NYPL copy, digitized May 18, 2010 for a slightly less blurred scan, see slightly different (1905) version of same advertisement at hathitrust

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trimmer, capable of taking charge of workroom of twenty-five girls

bleacher of straw braids, chips, fancy braids, furs, skins, feathers, and dyer of straw chips, fancy braids, furs, flowers, felts, feathers

designer of roses and branches knowledge of flowers and feathers

experienced whittler to take charge of straw braids

experienced lady designer in artificial flower and fancy feathers first class dyer and up-to-date bleacher of chips, split braids, Japs, Milan, mottled Tientsin or mottled braids of any class

Lady with experience for coloring flowers and foliage and maker of samples from high class to ordinarily good...

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all tagged flowers all tagged millinery all tagged help and situations wanted

Decorative Sunday

We return to our exploration of the works of Batty Langley with his book Practical Geometry Applied to the Useful Arts of Building, Surveying, Gardening and Mensuration, Second Edition, printed in London for Aaron Ward at the King’s Arm in Little-Britain, 1729.  Previously we highlighted Langley’s The City and Country Builder published in 1745.  

Batty Langley (1696-1751) was a prolific British writer and garden designer. We hold four of his books in our collections. Practical Geometry contains four parts related to the foundations of art, the orders of architecture, the doctrine and rules of mensuration (measuring), and exact tables of measuring. The title page notes that the whole book is “exemplify’d with a large number of folio copper plates, curiously engraven by the best hands.” The preface describes Langley’s goals for making his subjects accessible:

“My design therefore is to treat of architecture, gardening, mensuration and land-surveying, in a method as easy and intelligible as it is new and generally useful. I shall begin with the fundamental of first principles of these several arts, and gradually conduct my reader from the easier parts of ‘em up the hardest, taking particular care all along to let him see the utile as well as the dulce thereof; the fruitful practice, and not the barren theory only.”  

It is interesting that although Langley wrote about the technical and precise aspects to architecture and design, he had a very lovely way of designing gardens in irregular, winding mazes and shapes. My favorite drawings in the book are of the “Green Man” sculptures.

 View more posts about Batty Langley.

View more posts about decorative arts and pattern books.