The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33
The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33

The Great Art of Artillery. LM-33

Author: Siemienowicz Casimir, 1600 - 1651

Title: The Great Art of Artillery.

Published: London : printed for J. Tonson Book ID: 9455, 1729.

Format: Divided into 5 books, folio, approximately 310 x 210 mm, 12½ x 8 inches, engraved frontispiece and 22 folding engraved plates, pages: frontispiece, title page (printed in red and black), xi, [8] including errata, 1-404, plus 7 pages loosley laid in at the appropriate place (page 202) in neat readable manuscript in old ink. These 7 pages contain text that Shelvocke did not translate for some reason.

Binding: bound in full calf professionally rebacked to style, original endpapers still present. Rubbing and scuffing to covers, corners and some small patches to covers professionally repaired, offsetting from text to plates, mostly the plates at the front part of the book.

First English edition, first published in 1650 in Latin. This edition translated from the French edition of 1651 by Shelvocke. The author intended to write a second part but he died after the first part was finished.
Kazimierz Siemienowicz (circa 1600 - circa 1651), was a Polish-Lithuanian general of artillery, gunsmith, military engineer, artillery specialist and pioneer of rocketry. Born in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he served the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federation of Poland and the Grand Duchy, and in the armies of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a ruler of the Netherlands. No portrait or detailed biography of him has survived and much of his life is a subject of dispute (Wikipedia). The books is complete as published with all the illustrations and pages.  7 manuscript pages done a long time ago in old ink, are loosely laid in the book which were not translated from the original Latin edition and left out of this English edition. The spine is a modern reback done sometime before we purchased it.

References: Sotheby's The Library of the Earls of Macclesfield, part 10, page 319, No, 3771; Chris Philip, A Bibliography of Firework Books, page 135-136; Spaulding and Karpinski, Early Military Books in the University of Michigan Libraries, page 28 No, 247; Alan St H. Brock, A History of Fireworks (several references).

Casimir Siemienowicz’s The Great Art of Artillery was translated into English by George Shelvocke (1675–1742). Copies of the English version are rare in Lithuania.  

Reference: "The Collection of Lawyer Jaunius Gumbis: the Past Preserved in Books". Museum and Collector - 7. Vilnius: National Museum of Lithuania, 2018, p. 297.

Published: "The Collection of Lawyer Jaunius Gumbis: the Past Preserved in Books". Museum and Collector - 7. Vilnius: National Museum of Lithuania, 2018, p. 296-299.

Exhibitions: "The Collection of Lawyer Jaunius Gumbis: the Past Preserved in Books", September 3, 2018 – October 21, 2018.


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