Celebrate US Independence Day this 4th July with some quiet contemplation of recently restored fireworks books. The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced in a blogpost last week that they have conserved 19 books in their Department of Drawings and Prints on firework displays. The books cover more than four centuries of pyrotechnics, and include spotty 19th-century Japanese depictions reminiscent of colour-blindness tests; a 17th-century British engraving of how to make a fire-breathing dragon; and an 1818 German hand-coloured etching of an exploding chrysanthemum with a smiling face in the centre. Some of the books are straightforward manuals on how to make the actual explosive devices, while others provide more fanciful, and permanent, renditions of the colourful sky-splashes that last mere seconds.
