Beschryving der nieuwlyks uitgevonden en geoctrojeerde slang-brand-spuiten, en haare wijze van brand-blussen, ...

RA Collection: Book

Record number

07/4341

Author

Jan van der Heyden the elder, 1637-1712.

Variant Title

Description of the recently invented and patented fire engines with water hoses and the method of fighting fires now used in Amsterdam [English]

Imprint

Amsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz, 1690.

Physical Description

[8], 50 p., 19 pl. (7 double-page) ; 44 cm.

General Note

The plates include apocalyptic images of actual fires and fire-fighting in Amsterdam during the second half of the 17th century, ranging from the old Town Hall ablaze on the night of 7 July 1652 (pl.3) to the charred remnant of a Dutch East Indies Company ship (pl. 19) that caught fire in the early hours of 14 May 1690. Although unsigned they were nearly all drawn and etched by the painter and engineer Jan van der Heyden senior who, with his son, Jan junior, invented an improved fire-pump and pioneered the delivery of water to the seat of a fire via rivetted leather hoses. Preparatory drawings for these plates survive in the collections of the Print Room of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (Royal Antiquarian Society) and the Amsterdams Historisch Museum (see Peter C. Hutton, Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712), exh. cat., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, pp.74-81, 210-35). The revised and enlarged posthumously published second edition of 1735 is available in an English translation by Lettie Stibbe Multhauf entitled Van der Heyden: a description of fire engines with water hoses and the method of fighting fires now used in Amsterdam, (Canton, Mass., 1996).