About this Item
First edition, folio (55 x 38.4 cm.), Printed title, two leaves with 'List of the Plans, &c.' in double columns listing 160 plates and 180 engraved plates numbered 1 - 160, including the unnumbered plates 71 and 148 and 20 'bis' plates with duplicate numbers, 20 double-page and one large folding plate on two sheets; plates mounted on paper tabs (from sheets of the same work?) throughout, the title and text leaves on wove paper with the watermark '1809', the plates on laid paper with the watermark 'LLAR' and a fleur-de-lys countermark and others as per RIBA, the sheets retaining deckle edges throughout. Sheet size: c. 53.4 x 35.6 cm; double-page plates: c. 53.4 x 71.2 cm; title and text: 51.8 x 35.8 cm. Contemporary calf-backed marbled paper boards, later protective box. A beautiful unsophisticated copy of the notoriously rare Vitruvius Scoticus, the paramount source for the history of classical architecture in Scotland. What was to become William Adam's (1689 - 1748) magisterially-intentioned yet still mysterious Vitruvius Scoticus was first mentioned in a letter in 1726 and by late 1727 Adam was issuing subscription receipts for a book of 'My Designs for Buildings &c. in 150 Plates'. Initially proposed as a book in the manner of James Gibbs' Book of Architecture ('the first book in England to be devoted entirely to the designs of a living architect'), Adam intended clearly to rival Gibbs, to publicise his own work and to seek promotion and patronage from the new King, George II. By 1733, Adam had found an Edinburgh-based engraver suitable for the task (and one who may have shouldered some of the cost) in Richard Cooper, a student of John 'Friar' Pine and 'an acknowledged teacher and connoisseur of the fine arts'. Indeed, it may have been Cooper who was the first to suggest a generalisation of the work and the assumption of a distinct Scottish character with the new title Vitruvius Scoticus. Cooper worked solely from the limited resource of Adam's own designs and under the stricture that there would be no theoretical work in the publication and was therefore limited and slow in what he was able to achieve. It is clear that Cooper's engravings were finished by the early 1740s but the reasons the work was then abandoned - not for the last time - are rather less so. It has been suggested that William Adam hesitated to publish for a number of reasons: financial pressure and the inherent costs of paper, printing and publication; the curtailment of opportunities for promotion and patronage; a conflict of copyright; the 1745 Jacobite rising; Adam's advancing age; and, finally, the possibility of unflattering comparisons to Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus. At William's death in 1748, his son John revised the project, adding additional plates (including several taken from designs by his brothers Robert and James) and it seemed, at least briefly, that the book would finally appear. At the time of the crash of the Fairholme brothers' bank in 1764 all was in readiness but the added financial burden on all of the brothers led John to sell the publishing rights to the London-based Andrew Millar and his partner Thomas Cadell; they issued subscription proposals in 1766. The agreement between John and the Londoners stipulated that of the existing sheets, adequate for 950 copies, they would require material for 750 and would allow the remainder to be retained by John for the existing subscribers. No copies were issued - it has been suggested that the reason was related to copyright although Robert and James Adam's opposition to a family association with 'outmoded taste' has been offered as more compelling - and on Millar's retirement in 1767 the sheets were in storage where they remained for 40 years. In 1804, Thomas Cadell's son wrote to John Adam's son (another William) that he was no longer able to store the sheets but that a scrap-paper merchant had offered £100 for them. Cadell's advice was to accept and it has been assumed subseque. Seller Inventory # 94665
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