Modern Garden Decoration: Fountains and their Roots
Modern Garden Decoration: Fountains and their Roots The amazing or decorative effect of a fountain is just one of the purposes it fulfills, as well as supplying drinking water and adding a decorative touch to your property.
Originally, fountains only served a practical purpose. People in cities, towns and villages received their drinking water, as well as water to bathe and wash, from aqueducts or springs nearby. Used until the nineteenth century, in order for fountains to flow or shoot up into the air, their source of water such as reservoirs or aqueducts, had to be higher than the water fountain in order to benefit from the power of gravity. Fountains were an optimal source of water, and also served to adorn living areas and celebrate the artist. Roman fountains often depicted images of animals or heroes made of metal or stone masks. To depict the gardens of paradise, Muslim and Moorish garden planners of the Middle Ages introduced fountains to their designs. King Louis XIV of France wanted to illustrate his superiority over nature by including fountains in the Gardens of Versailles. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries manufactured baroque decorative fountains to exalt the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.
Indoor plumbing became the key source of water by the end of the 19th century thereby limiting urban fountains to mere decorative elements. Fountains using mechanical pumps instead of gravity helped fountains to provide recycled water into living spaces as well as create unique water effects.
These days, fountains adorn public areas and are used to pay tribute to individuals or events and fill recreational and entertainment needs.
Sculpture As a Staple of Vintage Art in Historic Greece
Sculpture As a Staple of Vintage Art in Historic Greece The primitive Greeks manufactured the first freestanding statuary, an awesome achievement as most sculptures up until then had been reliefs cut into walls and pillars. Youthful, ideal male or female (kore) Greeks were the subject matter of most of the sculptures, or kouros figures. The kouroi were believed by the Greeks to typify beauty and were sculpted with one foot leading and an uncompromising rigidity to their forward-facing poses; the male statues were always strapping, brawny, and undressing. Around 650 BC, life-sized variations of the kouroi began to be observed. The Archaic period was an awesome point of transformation for the Greeks as they expanded into new forms of government, formed unique expressions of art, and attained knowledge of the men and women and cultures outside of Greece. Notwithstanding, these battles did little to impede the advancement of the Greek civilization.The Circulation of Water Fountain Manufacturing Knowledge in Europe
The Circulation of Water Fountain Manufacturing Knowledge in Europe Throughout Europe, the chief means of dissiminating practical hydraulic information and fountain design ideas were the published pamphlets and illustrated books of the day, which added to the evolution of scientific development. An un-named French water feature engineer was an internationally famed hydraulic pioneer in the later part of the 1500's. By developing landscapes and grottoes with incorporated and clever water attributes, he started off his profession in Italy by getting Royal mandates in Brussels, London and Germany. The publication, “The Principles of Moving Forces,” penned towards the end of his life in France, turned out to be the fundamental writing on hydraulic mechanics and engineering. Describing modern hydraulic systems, the publication also modernized key hydraulic discoveries of classical antiquity. As a mechanized way to move water, Archimedes invented the water screw, fundamental among key hydraulic breakthroughs. Two hidden containers warmed by sunlight in a area adjacent to the decorative fountain were presented in an illustration. The heated liquid expands and subsequently rises and closes the pipes consequently activating the fountain.
Models for pumps, water wheels, water attributes and garden ponds are also included in the book.