Happy New Year 2019. Artful Fireworks, De Waag, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Here's one of the firework displays at Midnight, January 1, 2019. This is right above the medieval Waag on the Nieuwmarkt of Amsterdam.
Fireworks (and gunpowder) in Europe were primarily instruments of war or naval battles - and plots such as Guy Fawkes's - until the seventeenth century, and used in Grand Displays by the powerful and mighty.
But the common people apparently liked fireworks, too, as a kind of divertissement. That's clear from an injunction against fireworks e.g. by the magistrates of Amsterdam in 1645 afraid for fires in the mainly wooden city and of 'other inconveniencies'. It seemed difficult to put an end to the practice; indeed, firework displays were encouraged by the authorities to enhance public feelings of well-being. Treatises of technical and chemical instruction were written to regulate not outlaw the practice. Thus in 1672 a 'D.M.' (identified as a Rotterdam mathematician Daniel Manlyn) published Pyrotechnia of konstige vuur werken (Pyrotechnics or artful fireworks [www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/pageview/3858107]), more or less a translation of a similar English text by John Babington.
An introductory Ode to Fireworks by an unknown "I.L." underlines their usefulnesss and also the aesthetic pleasure they give. Surprisingly, Our Poet commences by saying that 'artful fire' - which gives life to lifeless things - delights him even more than Dame Flora's flowers...
Of course, these discussions continue till the present.
Happy New Year 2019. Artful Fireworks, De Waag, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Here's one of the firework displays at Midnight, January 1, 2019. This is right above the medieval Waag on the Nieuwmarkt of Amsterdam.
Fireworks (and gunpowder) in Europe were primarily instruments of war or naval battles - and plots such as Guy Fawkes's - until the seventeenth century, and used in Grand Displays by the powerful and mighty.
But the common people apparently liked fireworks, too, as a kind of divertissement. That's clear from an injunction against fireworks e.g. by the magistrates of Amsterdam in 1645 afraid for fires in the mainly wooden city and of 'other inconveniencies'. It seemed difficult to put an end to the practice; indeed, firework displays were encouraged by the authorities to enhance public feelings of well-being. Treatises of technical and chemical instruction were written to regulate not outlaw the practice. Thus in 1672 a 'D.M.' (identified as a Rotterdam mathematician Daniel Manlyn) published Pyrotechnia of konstige vuur werken (Pyrotechnics or artful fireworks [www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/pageview/3858107]), more or less a translation of a similar English text by John Babington.
An introductory Ode to Fireworks by an unknown "I.L." underlines their usefulnesss and also the aesthetic pleasure they give. Surprisingly, Our Poet commences by saying that 'artful fire' - which gives life to lifeless things - delights him even more than Dame Flora's flowers...
Of course, these discussions continue till the present.