Sullivan's City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan (review)

This book—in a coffee table format—is a delight for the eyes. Anyone with an interest in scientific instruments or scientific illustrations will peruse this book with joy. These wonderful pictures, over 250 and all in color, are accompanied by a clear and well written—although rather sparse—text. The authors are from the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and all illustrations are from instruments and materials owned by that famous institution.

The instruments range across compasses, sundials, quadrants, astrolabes, sextants, nocturnals, clocks, celestial globes, armillary spheres, orreries, and telescopes. The novice reader, unfamiliar with the purpose of an instrument or precisely how to use even a well-known one, will learn something here. For example, there are good descriptions of how to read a sundial and how to use a nocturnal to tell time at night by the position of the stars. Independent of their function, these instruments can be visually appreciated for their exquisite craftwork. Surely many scientific instruments of the past were objets d'art. Other illustrations are of images from the printed page: from manuscripts, broadsheets or books, depicting constellations, eclipses, comets, maps, diagrams, charts and so forth. These too may function as aesthetic objects.

One quibble: although every illustration is referred to in the text, there are no captions to the illustrations. Hence, a mere passing reference in the text is not always sufficient to fully grasp the content, meaning or purpose of some of the instruments and images. However there is a useful glossary of terms and an appendix with diagrams of celestial motions, exploded views of astrolabes, and so forth. Finally, the book is very reasonably priced.