William Williams | Oxonia Depicta, Oxford, [after 1733], later edition, contemporary calf rebacked

William Williams

Oxonia depicta sive collegiorum met Aularum in Inclyta Academia Oxoniensi. [Oxford: published by the author, after 1733]

Later edition (with each plate numbered on top left margin), folio (514 x 339mm.), 66 etched and engraved plates (comprising architectural title-page, dedication, 62 double-page plans and views, one folding plate, and index tabularum/list of subscribers), contemporary calf rebacked, sprinkled edges, new endpapers, closed tear in middle of plate 45, some marginal dampstaining, a few plates slightly browned, binding rubbed with hinges splitting

This book of handsome architectural plates was executed by the Welsh artist and engraver William Williams, and was intended as an updated version of David Loggan's Oxonia illustrata (1675). The work seems to have been conceived in the early 1720s, with Williams starting work by 1726. The depictions of the colleges are fascinating from an architectural historian's perspective because the buildings are sometimes not shown as they appeared in the 1730s, but rather "as they were intended to be built or rebuilt, according to the architect's designs" (BAL RIBA). For instance, plate 22 shows the façade of the Queen's College as it was designed by Hawksmoor, not as it was ultimately executed.

PROVENANCE:

Sir William Robert Grove (1811-1896), Welsh polymath, Fellow of the Royal Society, and graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, known for inventing the 'fuel cell' battery (the basis of the technology underpinning modern-day fuel cell electric vehicles), as well as for inventing the first incandescent electric light and pioneering early photographic processes (the Daguerreotype and calotype): armorial bookplate

LITERATURE:

cf. BAL RIBA 3667 (first edition): 'the work no doubt continued to be reprinted and sold for a while after 1733, and at some point most of the coppers were numbered'.