Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T10:35:35.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Elizabethan Instrument Makers: The Origins of the London Trade in Precision Instrument Making. By Gerard L'E. Turner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 305. £79.50.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2002

Koenraad Van Cleempoel
Affiliation:
Higher Institute for Architectural Sciences–Henry van de Velde, Antwerp

Extract

This book comprises two parts: a discussion of about 100 pages on the origins and growth of the London trade in scientific instrument making between 1540 and 1610, and on its main protagonists, serving as an introduction to a catalogue raisonné (c. 200 pages) of all recorded instruments by Elizabethan makers, including unsigned ones. For the latter the author wisely inserted an appendix (“The Attribution of Unsigned Instruments”) explaining a script-based methodology for making attributions of unsigned pieces. Comparative tables of letters and numbers from signed and unsigned instruments are put side-by-side, providing a more or less scientific foundation for an otherwise subjective exercise.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2001 The Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)