Modern Garden Decoration: Garden Fountains and their Beginnings
Modern Garden Decoration: Garden Fountains and their Beginnings
A fountain, an amazing piece of engineering, not only supplies drinking water as it pours into a basin, it can also launch water high into the air for an extraordinary effect. 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 in the area. Up until the 19th century, fountains had to be more elevated and closer to a water source, including aqueducts and reservoirs, in order to benefit from gravity which fed the fountains. Designers thought of fountains as wonderful additions to a living space, however, the fountains also served to provide clean water and celebrate the artist responsible for building it. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often times used by Romans to decorate their fountains. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden designers included fountains in their designs to re-create the gardens of paradise. The fountains found in the Gardens of Versailles were intended to show the power over nature held by King Louis XIV of France. To mark the entrance of the restored Roman aqueducts, the Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries commissioned the building of baroque style fountains in the spot where the aqueducts arrived in the city of Rome
The end of the nineteenth century saw the rise in usage of indoor plumbing to supply drinking water, so urban fountains were relegated to purely decorative elements. Amazing water effects and recycled water were made possible by switching the force of gravity with mechanical pumps.
Modern-day fountains serve mostly as decoration for open spaces, to honor individuals or events, and enhance entertainment and recreational activities.
The History of Outdoor Fountains
The History of Outdoor Fountains Hundreds of ancient Greek records were translated into Latin under the authority of the scholarly Pope Nicholas V, who led the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455.
He undertook the beautification of Rome to make it into the model seat of the Christian world. At the behest of the Pope, the Aqua Vergine, a ruined aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into Rome from eight miles away, was restored starting in 1453. Building a mostra, a grandiose celebratory fountain built by ancient Romans to memorialize the entry point of an aqueduct, was a custom revived by Nicholas V. The Trevi Fountain now occupies the space previously filled with a wall fountain built by Leon Battista Albert, an architect employed by the Pope. The Trevi Fountain as well as the well-known baroque fountains found in the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona were eventually supplied with water from the altered aqueduct he had rebuilt.
How Technical Concepts of Fountains Spread
How Technical Concepts of Fountains Spread Instrumental to the development of scientific technology were the published papers and illustrated books of the day. They were also the primary method of transferring practical hydraulic ideas and fountain design suggestions all through Europe.
An internationally renowned innovator in hydraulics in the later part of the 1500's was a French fountain engineer, whose name has been lost to history. His experience in designing landscapes and grottoes with integrated and brilliant water attributes began in Italy and with commissions in Brussels, London and Germany. He penned a book titled “The Principles of Moving Forces” towards the end of his life while in France which became the essential book on hydraulic mechanics and engineering. Detailing contemporary hydraulic technologies, the publication furthermore modernized critical hydraulic developments of classical antiquity. As a mechanized way to move water, Archimedes made the water screw, fundamental among crucial hydraulic innovations. A pair of concealed vessels warmed by the sun's rays in an room next to the ornamental water feature were presented in an illustration. The end result: the water fountain is triggered by the heated water expanding and ascending up the conduits. Yard ponds as well as pumps, water wheels, and water feature concepts are talked about in the book.