I’ve been immersed in seventeenth-century English instructional texts during my sabbatical, so it wasn’t difficult to find directions for fireworks for Guy Fawkes Night. Whether it was the foiled Gunpowder plot or the aspirational magnificence of the Stuart court, clearly there was demand for some very fancy displays in the air, on the ground, and in the water. One imagines that these flagrant displays would have been one more thing to irk the Puritans, if they were ever produced. Lots of fiery dragons (to highlight St. George), serpents and dolphins. I just love the idea of fighting fire with fire by celebrating with gunpowder, the key ingredient in all of the firework recipes in John Bate’s Mysteries of Art and Nature (1634), John Babbington’s Pyrotechnia. Or a Discourse of Artificial Fireworks (1635, is there any other kind?) and John White’s A Rich Cabinet with Variety of Inventions in Several Arts and Sciences (first published in 1651). The “Green Man” wielding the “firecracker” introducing Bate’s fireworks chapter is one of my very favorite printed images. Remember, remember.
All (embellished) illustrations from Bate (1634) with the exception of the Knight +Dragon (Babbington, 1635).
